Saturday, March 6, 2010

eloe omoe - marauders

The cross-pollination of genres is so abundant, it’s hard to keep up with the new terms coined on a seemingly daily basis to describe what the current breed of American garage dwellers might be pushing through their vintage SUNN® amps while customizing the settings on their Line 6's. ‘Free-sludge’ seems to be the term du jour bestowed upon Boston duo Eloe Omoe. For me, ‘free-sludge’ sounds too much like something you’d get as a souvenir from the Labrea Tar Pits, so I’ll go with my own made-up term: freeform fire-doom.

Omoe (named after the bass clarinetist from Sun Ra's Arkestra) join a burgeoning group of new acts skirting the line between rock and noise, though from astonishingly divergent angles. Gary Beauvais’s Animal Disguise label, on which Marauders is released, seems to be one of the top showcases for acts of this sort. Amongst the ADR roster: Kentucky’s Cadaver In Drag blend screeching noise histrionics with old time Discordance Axis-style thrash; Sic Alps sound something like the Brainbombs covering Strawberry Alarm Clock; Gary's own Mammal project has morphed into a bass-rumbling Saint Vitus-ish one-man band, complete with detached blues singing and American loner style; and new signees Warmer Milks have yet to meet a musical trope they couldn’t bifurcate and leave splayed and dripping blood on the altar of post-rock. Eloe Omoe are fortunate to be ensconced by such a tight-knit family of like-minded deconstructionists.

When masquerading as humans, the members of Eloe Omoe go by Tim Leanse (drums) and Sam Rowell (bass). References to other power duos like M__th_s and L_g__ni_ B__t will be tempting to make, but are best left unstated, as such a crass pigeonholing would be uncouth. Other comparisons to GodheadSilo and the Amp-Rep roster of you're are not totally out of line, but one could argue that the similarities are in sonority and attitude alone. Eloe Omoe are much less structured and more in line with the wild jazz stylings of their namesake’s mother-ship.

Regardless of what genre you feel the need to place them in, the results are pummeling. Rowell’s bass playing is intense, essentially a non-stop assault on the ears, while Leanse’s drumming, though kind of familiar-sounding, is masterfully annihilative. Their group dynamic is something akin to a 72-car pile-up -- sounds of screeching metal, bursting carburetors, and the hum of stalling transmissions whirring in cacophonous disharmony until FEMA rolls out its new state-of-the-art Gargantuon 2000 industrial steamroller to pave over the whole mess.

Hail to Eloe Omoe and Animal Disguise for keeping the amps turned up and the inhibitions low. Furthermore, hail to this new golden age where lo-fi nihilism and free-form expressivity are put back into rock ‘n’ roll where they belong. It’s heartening to know that such ideals still burn in the darker recesses of this country’s dying culture.

eloe omoe - marauders

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