Fricke’s Picks: The Octopus Project, “Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs 1913-1938″ and Roy Wood

Published: December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm

Happy Machine Music Machines don’t make music people do. And going by the bright action-packed gurgle, bam and squeak of their third album, the Octopus Project a mostly instrumental analog-electronics dance band from Austin, Texas are smart pop scientists and total party animals, like Stereolab with happy feet. And a stopwatch the thirteen songs on Hello, Avalanche (Peek-A-Boo) are all tightly composed bundles of synthesized whoop and circus-calliope cheer, dotted with throaty Duane Eddy-treble guitar and powered by prancing-elephant drumming. The closest thing here to conventional club-remix electronica is the thumping near-techno of “MMAJ.” But for all of the willful yesterday in the Octopus Project’s discoth que blend of Switched-On Bach and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, there is a delightful, disciplined modernism in the album’s brisk parade of hooks and the songs’ densely layered brevity. Compared to the purple-surf rock of

[ Full article ]

Blog link

Rating: 0

Comments