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January 25, 2006
frozen green birds
So during this past Sunday's roadtrip with my little brothers to Yocco's Hot Dogs, we stopped in a record store in Kutztown called Young Ones . I'm sure the preceding sentence means very little to anyone living outside of southeastern Pennsylvania, so: point being- I found a used copy of Orthrelm's "OV" there, for like $8, and snatched it up.
I had heard good things about the record, and hey, turns out they were all true. "OV" operates in such a way that it's like a series of continuous, barely restrained explosions; physiologically, this piece would be like a person who was constantly on the adrenaline fight-or-flight threshold. The patterns that Barr and Blair create are deceptive, technically amazing (awe-inspiring, really) and protean (some of the phrases they play are so, so difficult to parse, after a while it's like you have no concept of what you're listening to, like the sounds are too quick to register in your mind). This album is fantastic- repitition is the main operator of "OV" and so it's easy, at times, to kind of zone out, but because Orthrelm have stitched these riffs together (quilt-style), there's always something- an abrupt change, a break in the percussion, a guitar note that's held for more than a millisecond- to bring you back into it. I like to think of "OV" as like a really ornate and well-wrought chain-mail blanket, with each hand-crafted link varying in size, texture, and metallurgical purity.
Orthrelm are going on tour soon (playing Norfolk VA's Relative Theory Records on 2/8) so catch them live if you can. You can buy "OV" right here.
Posted by Kevin at January 25, 2006 09:11 AM