Oma Under the World - Limited to 100 - Clear Ocean Green Vinyl.
An electronic splinter group comprising members of UK-based noise-punk DIY underground stalwarts Action Beat, OMA (Dutch for "Grandmother") are Don McLean, Harry Taylor, James Carney, Bianca Biblioni, and G.W. Sok - former vocalist with The Ex - now presenting their second album, "Under The World".
With the core members geographically separate (situated between Bletchley, New York City, Manchester and Rotterdam), but united by a shared desire to explore electronic music elements, "Under The World" began in 2018 as an online exchange of ideas, improvisations and drop-boxed WAV files. Culminating in an in-person collaboration in July 2019 at the "holiday home on acid", Devon Analogue Studio (described by McLean as being "full of vintage synths we definitely couldn't afford").
The result is an extraordinarily dark record charting a murky parasonic subterrain all of its own, an exhilarating, defoliated, forbiddingly woozy sound that merges brittle electronic rhythms with morose ambience, sideways humour, even moments of raw emotive grief - serving, both in process and in sound, as an eerie anticipation of the face-masked, disinformatic dystopia of the COVID-wracked world now receiving it.
Transformed by G.W. Sok's surreal poetic ruminations, Bianca Biblioni's mournsome vocals (the solemn "Crossing") and the downright creepy whisper of Action Beat’s James Carney ("Checklist Of Regret"), these are tracks every bit as textual as they are textural - lyrics offered as obliterative fragments, with references to Allen Ginsberg ("Under The World") and Bacharach & David ("Ello Veeyee") battling ruinous despair, disgust, and eventually, amidst all the synthesized squalor, even glimmers of hope. As Harry Taylor puts it, it's an album that represents "growth, reflection, humour and moving on" - Alan Harrison, 2021
Includes unlimited streaming of Under the World
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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