Fricke Picks The Octopus Project
by Aubrey Edward
Austin’s own Octopus Project have been touring the past few months in support of their most recent release Hello Avalanche and the latest release and hard work on the road seems to be attracting attention. I recently heard Cheryl Waters, of KEXP fame, mention her newfound interest in the band just recently discovering the quirky electronica of The Octopus Project. And now you have Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke listing the band as one of Fricke’s Picks.
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 discothèque 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 “Bees Bein’ Strugglin’ ” and the mermaid-choir effect of Yvonne Lambert’s theremin in “I Saw the Bright Shinies,” the Prodigy are so 1997.
Ha! The Prodigy. I haven’t thought about those guys since……..
