Olo - The Steve Christy EP
(Anechoic)
More like Return to Forever than The Sea and Cake but seemingly influenced by both, OlO performs the fakest of jazzes using standard post rock song structures with fusion-like keyboard melodies. In fact, I thought I had OlO all figured out. Is the "o" a letter or a number? Is the "l" a letter or a number? If both are numeric, then the band's name is the uber-mathy number 010, which may seem like gibberish to us but to your common computer, 010 is the octal representation of eight, the leading 0 specifying octal, and the trailing 10 evaluating to 8 in our ten-fingered counting system.
This theory really started to kick in when listening to "Press Jump Button Makes Jumpman Jump." The song starts off lite and airy, like a Isaac Hayes-esque love fest, the rim-tapping drums counting eighth notes in standard 4/4 time. Then the Mogwai-like field of noise and debris starts to rain down from the various distortion pedals, starting off as a dark, Floydian soundscape that eventually starts to chug forward, the guitar reacting against the wall of noise to create rhythm, building then releasing then building again. Through the various phases of this song, there is one constant, though: the jazzy eighth notes from the drummer. Perhaps this isn't just eighth notes in 4/4 time, though; perhaps this can be called 8/8 time!
Perhaps all the songs are in "8/8 time;" perhaps this is their "gimmick" that I have so geniously deciphered. Cycling back to song one of this hefty thirty minute, four-song "EP," we hear the same sort of fast-paced drumwork in "Death Through Habitual Living." Guest cornetist Forrest "I love you Jen-ny" Means and the keyboard players create straight jazz fusion, fitting with the drummers fast pace. From these pure jazz beginnings, the song really unfolds beautifully when the lyrics begin two-thirds of the way in, the fragile, Yorke-ian vocals and wall-of-sound rock guitars creating a pure head-bobbing rock sound.
"Pine and Powder" also fits into eight eighth-note beats, bringing in more pop aspects for the first half of the song, sounding more and more like The Sea and Cake (although missing any Claridge-worthy bass playing), but then switching gears in the middle as the vocals fall out to become lite jazz, a low point on this otherwise great EP. The pop portion of this song is enjoyable though, with an organ-sounding, American Analog Set-esque keyboard drone mixing with an intricate, snake-charmer guitarwork.
The whole "theory of 8s" falls apart though when listening to "Il Popolo," which doesn't have much of anything to do with 8s. The drums are much sparser and the keyboard melody is actually played a bit faster than 8/8 time. Sounding closer to Tortoise and Directions in Music than anything else in this EP, the squeaky keyboard and electric guitar play call and response before a shimmering build. After the build, the shimmering keyboards sounds continue, stuttering and strutting along against similar rhythms from the guitar.
010 has some obvious influences, but I don't think they're afraid of these influences. If people were to drop Yes, Pink Floyd, The Sea and Cake, Tortoise, Mogwai, or any other hype band on them, they'd probably take it more as a compliment than a dig on their originality. The band doesn't seem to let any of that get in the way of just crafting excellent sounding songs—songs that are dark, songs that are expansive, songs that rock, songs that are melodic, etc., etc.—even if they don't stick to that 8/8 time gimmick all the time.
Wait. The font on the cover art for The Steve Christy EP clearly differentiates between Os and zeros by putting a line through the zeros. And I'm pretty sure 8/8 time doesn't really exist; it is just 4/4 time with eighth notes. The band's name is "olo," after all, which I guess just means "existence" in Finnish. But that's another story altogether.
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