ARTIST: Oblisk
TITLE: Tune In/Tune Out
LABEL: Double A Records
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 195kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 1h 06min total
RELEASE DATE: 2008-00-00
RIP DATE: 2008-00-00
Track List:
1. Getaway Ride 4:09
2. Parallel 5:27
3. You're A Machine 3:29
4. Broken Antenna 4:49
5. Fifth Year 3:17
6. Ancestors 6:24
7. Beirut 3:31
8. Big City Birds 3:43
9. Empty File Reel 3:17
10.Tune In/tune Out 5:34
11.Short Story 5:37
12.Python 7:39
13.Walking Through Walls 3:14
14.Married to the Sea 6:01
Not unlike the mysterious pillar suddenly appearing before the
apes in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, the Detroit-based Oblisk is at
once unknowable and undeniably present. Sounding like an even
more disaffected Dean Wareham, lead singer-guitarist Asim Akhtar
intones distance over ghostly organ and skittish drums, while
guitars pick out delicate melodies or cyclic, oblong riffs.
More human than Hal, though, much of the time Oblisk is more like
a musically fleshed-out version of Bowie's Major Tom ù not the
song in which he resides but the character himself, if he were
given the opportunity to present his outer-space plight over the
course of an entire album. He'd certainly still be de-Earthed and
possibly on the verge of panic, but ultimately accepting of his
disconnection with wistful abandon. And when the music here works
best, Oblisk charges onward behind Akhtar, much like Tom's
ever-hurtling spaceship ù all roaring nitrogen, anti-gravity and
sucking air.
Musically, Oblisk hasn't forgotten the effectiveness of basic
psychedelia; the left-right panning looped guitar of Empty Film
Reel (yes, that's a name) has all the effect of a sizable intake
of nitrous oxide (please put the headphones on for this one), and
as the unintelligible (backward?) vocals mumble desperately just
below the surface and microscopic shards of guitar start
pinpricking the skin, it just gets weirder. But a moment later,
the listener is suddenly encased in the churning, swampy title
track, and the contrast has the effect of flailing one's way
through cobwebs in the House of the Long Shadows, only to hit on
solid pavement when something like a chorus comes along. Safe
ground! And then those guitars start back up in a shimmering arc
toward the moon ...
It's that hazy unknowable quality that keeps the listener
returning to these songs, as if there's some code to crack with
just one more listen. It's likely, though, that in fact there is
no code ù just thick, webby psychedelia comfortably wrapped
around some very good songs ... and far out of reach of Ground
Control.
"Darkly swaying fuzz drones vividly shape visions of austere
dystopias through strongly laid tones of guitar-heavy post-punk's
fiery wrenching shreds and shimmering unearthly flares married
with a '60s druggy art-rock feel of serpentine melodies sung
through fuzzed-out AM-radio mics, conveying poetic and foreboding
elegies of life and love in an enclosing technological nightmare.
This local quartet brings a dark but energizing music of
escapism, with a dreamy, atmospheric coating through capable and
experimental recording styles. "Ancestors" is this city's new
bittersweet, reflective anthem, an epic, cathartic guitar blitz.
http://www.myspace.com/oblisk