Take Off!

It's perhaps a little unfair to boil down a band to a ramble of a description, but on Take Off!, the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra are clearly out to give the people what they want, if what they want is swank coffeehouse lounge, sweeping classical jazz, and space age pop. (And some people do want that.) The secret as such behind this 20-member group's intent, led by composer Daniel Glatzel, is putting it all together with vim and verve — after not only the original "scenes" as such, but their collective 1990s revival, hearing Take Off! leads a listener to conclude that the band is at once even more retro than the revivalists and somehow utterly charming in its bombast and swing. Consider a song like "Asteroids!" which posits what a fantasy film starring Austin Powers in the appropriate Empire Strikes Back sequence would be scored to, complete with guests appearances from Marvin the Martian and, towards the end, Ken Nordine's backing band at its creepiest. Not everything is completely gone in quite that fashion, thus the sweeter float of "Milky Way Fables," but the frenetic grooves of "Radioactive People" — polite, wacky, and crazy all at once, down to the strings — gives a truer picture of the album's merry intent.