The band consist of Bill Doss, Will Hart, Eric (the Exploding Nosh) and Mowgli,
all of whom are based in Athens, Georgia. 'California Demise' is the title of
their debut 7" EP, originally released on the Elephant 6 collective and then
re-pressed by Matt Hanks at Sunday Driver Records after, Will tells me, they ran
out of money for the sleeves. "Elephant 6 is a group of friends which aims to
put innovative quality entertainment into a world which doesn't apparently known
much about such things. It's music, it's film, it's art and it's ideas. It's a
collective vision. Actually, there's more than six of us now. The groups which
use the logo include, aside from ourselves, The Apples (In Stereo), Neutral Milk
Hotel, Secret Square and The Clay Bears."
| |||
The unerringly catchy title song of the Olivia Tremor Control's debut EP picks
itself up, takes a trip to the water closet and stumbles, gloriously stoned, to
a blurry conclusion in a melee of backwards guitars and dreamy vocals on the
B-side. Meanwhile the band are already launching into the deftly psychedelic 'A
Sunshine Fix', with trumpet, miscellaneous keyboards and a prominent bass-line
all fixing themselves a place in the pop firmament before the wonderful
fade-out, and the record ends with the magnificently Lennon-esque 'Fireplace',
the lid crashing down on the piano with a final, inescapably dazzling flourish.
|
| ||
|
The OTC's 'Giant Day' 7" EP released by Drug Racer (an American/English
co-operative) is, if anything, even more representative of the their astonishing
range of sounds, from the dark, blurry pop sentiency of 'Shaving Spiders' to the
quintessentially complex psychedelia of 'The Princess Turns The Key To Cubist
Castle' (curtain calls part 1, 2 and, over on the other side, part 3). 'I'm Not
Feeling Human' is one of the band's more accessible tunes, although close
analysis of the lyrics, in which the various mineral and vegetable states of the
singer's psych are intoned against a Beach Boys-inspired harmony vocal, reveals
depths which the casual listener might not wish to plumb. The record closes with
every psychedelic filigree in the production department's 60s handbook well to
the fore in a number entitled 'The Giant Day - Dusk', a reference to the full
title of the record which is (takes deep breath) 'The Giant Day Prelude to Music
from the Unrealized Film Dusk at Cubist Castle'.
|
The six songs on the record
tell the story of the Giant Day, which is in itself only the beginning of the
Cubist Castle concept. Oh dear, that dread word "concept", so redolent of
pompous 70s progressive rock bands who wrote 'suites' rather than songs because
they were incapable of coming up with a decent chorus. Fear not though, dear
reader; in the capable hands of the Olivia Tremor Control even conceptual works
are never quite what they seem. Indeed, it's the band themselves that are the
concept here and not so much the music. 'Dusk At Cubist Castle' is, as the
Sunday name suggests, a film script ("we'll finish the movie when we have the
money" - where've I heard that one before?), the soundtrack to which amounts to
two LPs worth of material which are coming out on Flydaddy Records out of
Seattle home too of the very wonderful Cardinal, a coincidence that's too good
simply brush under the carpet. So we'll ignore it gracefully and move on.
|
|
|
"If you buy the LP records you'll get all the 'Dusk At Cubist Castle' pop songs,
plus some of the Olivia Mind Control Method dream sequences and a surprise. The
CD will contain all the songs since the format's longer, and the first 2,000
will have the dream sequences as an extra CD so you can finally get a decent
night's sleep. The songs will introduce the characters and the plot of 'Dusk At
Cubist Castle' and the dream sequences are actual dreams of time-frame
happenings from people in the film, for instance Jacqueline and Olivia. We're
hoping Yoko Ono will make a guest appearance."
| ||
| |||
"Well, first there's the songs in the sense of a classic short-attention span
pop song with lyrics and so-on, but then there's the Olivia Mind Control Method
which is basically instrumental material that we're going to refer to as
experimental. There's also some very mellow atmospheric field recordings that
reflect our interest in music that takes you somewhere in the longer term as
opposed to the two and a half minutes. Our philosophy of recording is simply to
try everything and experiment as much as possible: turn it backwards, twist it,
put it under water, cut it up, make it beautiful, record it from across the
street, speed it up when it should be slowed. There are many facets of recording
(as in life), and we've only just begun to explore them."
|
| ||
Indeed. Even as I write this, the band are off to record their first full-length
LP at the Elephant Six Recording Company in Denver, Colorado along with The
Apples (in Stereo) and Neutral Milk Hotel. The results, I can promise you, will
be refreshingly different and unbelievably beautiful.
|