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Album Review
by SashaS
14-1-2004
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| Oceansize: music to surf the clouds |
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Oceansize: 'Effloresce'
(Beggars Banquet)
Slipped Disc #14: Oceansize
Last year some 700,000 guitars were sold in the UK and one of the reason for such rebirth of interest in the prime rocking instrument is that no machinery can ever replace the joy of firing that chord and seeing hordes go mental. The resurgence of guitar music is in not in small debt to this lot, as well as everyone from Muse to Kinesis to The Coral.
Oceansize take music into spacious fields with psychedelic hedging (opener ‘I Am The Morning’) while ‘Catalyst’ takes a more complex route to create a hypnotic atmo with an ornamental and pedantic guitar phrase… Other songs scout deeper into imagine-land, somewhere where fairies hang out. These tracks can lead you a-way to the outer limits… with the right stimulants it can probably answer the question whether there was life on Mars.
Having gigged regularly over the past 18 months with great success, including two tours with The Cooper Temple Clause and one with kindred spirits Cave-In, nu-prog rock rebels Oceansize - Mike Vennart (guitar, lead vocals), Steve Durose (guitar, vocals), Gambler (guitar), Jon Ellis (bass), Mark Herrin (drums) - have certainly learnt how to express themselves with an astonishingly mature playing. And they have a bloody powerful sound!
‘Effloresce’ was recorded and produced by Chris Sheldon (Foo Fighters, Feeder) during Spring /Summer 2003 and contains dozen tracks that mix shimmering, delicate ambient keyboards and their trademark spellbinding, 3-guitar attack. The album includes ‘One Day All This Could Be Yours’ from their last EP, as well as previous single ‘Remember Where You Are’.
Still, to merely tag them as a nu-prog rockers is as safe as … - is there anything left? - because there are elements and influences by numerous other groups of varying genres, from Mogwai to Led Zeppelin, Velvet Underground to The Doors, Tool to Can, My Bloody Valentine to Faith No More… Of contemporaries, they can easily be related to Dead Meadow.
All we’d like to say is that the more we have great New Guitar Breed bands the better because it would bring down people like Dido and Goddess knows we can do without such drooling… ‘Effloresce’ is a huge bloom!
8.5/10
SashaS
14-1-2004
Oceansize’s album ‘Effloresce’ is available now on Beggars Banquet
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