Label: Peek-A-Boo Rating: 3.5 Guns
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Written By: Kevan Peterson
The Octopus Project hails from Austin, Texas, a place nowhere near the ocean. So how did these Octopuses’ come to be? The album is filled at times with so much trippy tunes and psychedelic free-form that they may have come from outer space. Primarily known for their instrumental work on previous outings The Octopus Project opens the track surprisingly with a vocal-heavy tune, “Wet Gold.”
Heavy hand claps open the album before launching into a Post Office like sound. (The band not the government agency.) Yvonne Lambert harmonizes with sometimes front man Josh Lambert on the tune before falling into vocal obscurity for the remainder of the album. “Moon Boil,” finds the band pushing out some of their most rock-oriented tunes with some pretty full guitar noise and dense drums, before the band tosses in the towel on the who singing thing and churns out a number of instrumental tunes.
“Rorol,” uses spaced-out guitars and a Theremin to create what could be the theme to their very own sci-fi show. After several minutes of atmospheric noodling, drums and bass enter the fray to bring the song home. The five track EP closes off with two more instrumentals, each one feeling more light hearted then the last. “Wood Trumpet,” offers a mixture of straight rock, with sliced and inserted space melodies. “Half a Nice Day,” sounds like it would have played perfectly as a theme song to an early Nintendo game, using blips and bleeps to their fullest potential.
Overall, The Octopus Project finds themselves swimming in some new and uncharted waters, both for them as a band embracing more vocals than they have previously (at least in terms of percentage of the album) and for rock music in general which seldom puts a Theremin front and center.
