This album is fucking awesome. Ohana are out there in the Australian music scene constructing unfathomably genius musical architecture and I ask what the hell do I contribute? Sadly only a few feeble adjectives that do no just description. “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, writing about musical architecture simply has no comparison and is impossible. This Zappa quote is perhaps over-referenced, but really you just need to HEAR these boys. Might I add that Dead Beat is cathartic bliss; I would not recommend being behind the wheel at first listening.
The second release after their 2006 debut ‘Weak Wrists’ (not included their split EP with To The North), these Wollongong boys have produced 8 tracks of pure geometric delight. It is raw, original and sealed with tightly refined and irregular sound and spatial explorations. Its depth comes in the re-encountering and re-interpretation of lead guitar and bass equations throughout. Lyrical cadences peak and drop within these 3 minute structures adding rabid urgency…
They Scoundrels is the awakening of rusty robo-transformers emerging to unleash mayhem…but this LP descends not into mayhem…powerful and complex yes, but all along mayhem is just a suggestion, a mere hint, lingering at the fringes of the jungle. It is controlled.
Our distant foundations is GLORIOUS. Intricate and discordantly melodious. Enough said. Dead Beat is fascinating and warrants multiple listenings… it deconstructs and expands. After the third listening, it becomes incomprehensible… I have not yet disentangled myself.
Go and see this band, I was sourly disappointed to miss them in Sydney on their October tour. One listening will silence all complaints about flat indie or metal music and will leave you feeling cheated because you didn’t know about these dudes earlier. As words do no justice, here ends my piece, I will detain you no longer from obtaining this album. Go…go!
Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/ohanamusic
