and there’s that feeling of pure pleasure you get from hearing guitar solos that were done in one take and slightly flawed vocal harmonies recorded on the fly before Pro Tools existed. The drums are so round and close they sound like you could eat them. The way those albums look and feel like a lost pillar of classicism. This album was originally aesthetically based on the joy of pulling out old 70's American & British songwriting LPs at night while you're pounding whiskeys by the fireplace. how to replicate live-sounding recordings where a band is reacting and playing off of each other in real-time. That's basically what I learned 4-tracking in the 90's. but we 'faked' that vibe using one player. In The Garden is essentially John Agnello and I out at Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey carving out the sound of a classic 70's record if it had been made by a band with all its players being very focused in the hey-day of their career. trapped in amber and mashed into a near-ambient distillation of confusion and suffering. These recordings are tangibly haunted and plagued by a distinct sense of 'spiritual trouble'. This batch of Lost Decade tapes is taken from a crucial time of Emil's development (1996-2002) that he spends a lot of time going into on his acclaimed podcast " Drifter's Sympathy". There's a palpable stench of pot smoke swirling around these late-night recordings and a constant sense of supreme alienation. Lost Decade is a rare look into the mountain of recordings Emil Amos amassed while in full-swing of the initial lo-fi revolution. and in this unfashionable dead-zone is where the Lost Decade series was made in private. Not until Ariel Pink arrived would people consider the weirdo genre of home-recording ready to be stocked on store shelves again. Simultaneously the 'lo-fi movement' was proclaimed dead by the press for the next decade. Then only a few years later, Nirvana opened up the commercial market for underground music and virtually all of the home-recording pioneers stepped out of their shabby environments towards a new horizon of recording studio budgets. Definitely make sure to give this a listen.The Lo-fi recording boom rose to prominence in the late 80's when new recording technology brought 4-tracks within teenager's grasp at an affordable price. If you've heard any of Α&Ω's dubs before or aren't certain how to feel on Om, then this one will be more likely to strike your fancy-it's not as demanding from a musical or time perspective. Of the two Α&Ω dubplates, this one is most likely to appeal to folks unfamiliar with the band. I am almost certain someone with a more carefully trained ear for dubbing could point me wrong on this, however. To my ear, untrained in the genre, they sound like the same ideas the former side just seems to take them a bit further. It infuses the electronic elements developed on the front side without actually extending or shortening the original track significantly. The B-Side contains the other reworking, titled "Addis Ababa", which is a much more straightforward adaption of Om's original piece. The only distaste I find in this version is in their heavy reliance on forced triplets-they seem completely antithetical to the very understated and pacific piece they're building off of. Also, without relying as much on the female vocals to carry the piece, it places a lot more focus on the underlying instrumentation, making it feel less like a soliloquy and more like a band piece proper. The 4/4 nature of the song becomes heavily drawn out (with a much larger 1-3 emphasis), making the piece feel less reverently languid and more intentional and purposeful. It's very soft and unassuming, even for Om, using its repetitive nature to slowly build up emotional tension in the listener over a time span of just five minutes, which, if you're unfamiliar with the band, is almost unheard of for them.Īlpha & Omega's first reworking, "Ababa Dub", shows an interesting take on the piece. The (comparatively) short opening track from Advaitic Songs, "Addis" is a very light piece that lays Arabic-influenced chant and instrumentation over Om's usual raison d'être. The first, the Addis Dubplate, is a reworking of Om's song "Addis". But they aren't stopping anytime soon-in addition to a planned single from frontman Al Cisneros to hit later this year, two of the band's tracks from their latest release have been handled by British reggae/dub act Alpha & Omega to be released as a series of dubplates. Everyone's favourite stoner rock band with a flair for the religious Om has been on a roll lately, releasing the incredible Advaitic Songs just last year.
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