Octopus Project - Identification Parade
(Peek-A-Boo)
Midtown. City bus. Five o'clock in the afternoon. A white glob of goo is sitting on a crowded bench, when two cookies come on the bus. The cookies find room on both sides of the goo, and the goo is squeezed in the middle—smack dab in the middle.
While describing a commercial for the new Chips Ahoy sandwich cookie might not be the most likely place to start a review, let's forget musical references for the moment. There is something great about how that commercial was put together. The stop-motion animation is vivid and colorful, albeit with jerky motion that isn't quite right, and each element in the scene is doing something odd and interesting, whether it be the child trying to break off a piece of his fellow travellers or the 'tween fist-pumping to the instantly ingrained jingle. It is a great commercial, and it leads into this review of The Octopus Project's album Identification Parade not because the band are some sort of retro jingle-meisters but because I get that same sort of giddy joy from listening to The Octopus Project as I do from watching the creamy goodness get squeezed smack dab in the middle.
Speaking of getting squeezed in the middle, the same could be said of The Octopus Project's style, as they are one of many bands who have attempted to bridge the gap between rock and electronica. Where The Octopus Project is different is that they seem to not really know what the hell they really are. All those Mute and Thrill Jockey bands pretty much knew what they were. Bands like To Rococo Rot and Mouse on Mars were electronica bands that happened to rock a little bit. Bands like Trans Am and Directions in Music were rockers who had an interest in techno. The Octopus Project is different in that, as the label describes in their mythology, they just picked up some broken old instruments and tried to play music like what they were interested in—they just happened to be interested in both electronica and rock and roll.
This punk naivety really fits in well with their sound, as the band doesn't seem to care where things are supposed to go, only where they sound right going. The music is layered as seemingly disparate sounds are mixed together into a frothy blend: the most persistent 4/4 dance beat pounds along to tinny rock guitar, a humming and reverberating rock guitar moans beside twinkling keyboard arrhythmia, drum-and-bass is smothered with affected guitar. There's always something in these compositions that gives the song a unsteady, wobbling feeling. For instance, the drums and guitar might be solid and straightforward, but there's a keyboard playing against the guitar with some sort of just-off rhythm that gives the song the feeling of a spinning-top just about to fall over.
While the band seems to be just as much electronica as rock, this off-kilter nature to their rhythms and sounds is much more subtle than what one would expect from true electronica. The Octopus Project does not plan frenzy; they plan slight missteps and off-alignments, ones that catch the listener by surprise.
It can be an intense feeling, one heightened by the band's creative use of tones.
The Octopus Project uses many effects. Keyboard tones are morphed and generally fucked around with, creating soothing rich organ tones, dinny space tones, etc., etc. Guitar sounds are given Edge-like treatments, sounding like full-on stadium rock, or they can be delicate, like some sort of bookish post rocker. Live drums are warbled and turned into bursts of static, and fake drums are turned into the flattest of rim shots. Each song has some sort of new tone that is slightly different than any heard before.
In all, The Octopus Project is just a joy to listen to. All the younger bands who have tried to take over where Tortoise's first two albums left off seem to have it all wrong. Post rock wasn't supposed to be cold and stylized. Post rock was supposed to be intricate but also alive, colorful, inventive, and textured. Perhaps it's all where the band is coming from. It's not really that hard to tell when a band enjoys playing together; usually the same feeling is felt by the listener, just as all of The Octopus Project's curiosity and jubilation about the forms of electronica and rock and roll come through in Identification Parade.
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