Album of the day: The Oscillation – Veils

Praise for The Oscillation‘s Veils from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Yay! Out of the blue, here’s a new one from The Oscillation. The Oscillation? You might remember, a few years back (2008) we raved about this UK band’s debut album Out Of Phase, an import on the DC Recordings label. We described their music as “a druggy, dubby mix of rhythmically krauty space rock, angular No-Wave funkiness, and, yes, oscillating electronics” and mentioned Neu!, Hawkwind, Salvatore, Tussle, and White Hills over the course of the review, as possible comparisons. If we were writing it now, we’d probably also cite the Lumerians, Moon Duo, Majeure, K-X-P, Maserati, Nisennenmondai…

The Oscillation’s trance-inducing throb turned out to be, not surprisingly, something that a lot of you liked as much as we did! However we kinda lost track of them, for a while – though apparently they’ve been gigging hard – and thus were super excited to see that this new album was available, and it’s domestically priced too.

Picking up where the debut left off three years ago, it’s another potent dose of krauty rhythms, dubby disco, and druggy psych, both mesmerizing and melodic, but maybe, at times, heavier, more “rocked out” than before, witness the the beefier guitar on some tracks definitely getting into The Heads territory! Though The Oscillation started off as a one man band (that man being Demian Castellanos of Orichalc Phase), it grew from an electronic producer project into a fully-fledged live act, the power of which is displayed here (but also their mellow, shoegazey spacey side too). ‘Tis mostly instrumental, even when it isn’t, the occasional effected, hushed and chant-like vox betraying their (Brit)pop sensibility amidst the pulsating motorik beats, washes of distortion, and electronic FX… what’s not to like??

The album opens with the subtle atmospheric drones and percussive textures of ‘Sandstorm’, a build-up to the mantric chatter and sheer spacey howl of ‘Future Echo’, like so many of the songs here, sounding like the perfect soundtrack to some futuristic, cinematic chase scene taking place in a Blade Runner style dystopia – though others sound more appropriate to a weightless drift, off into the soothing deeps of (inner) space.

Next up, the haunting ‘Fall’ eventually ups the ampage ante even more, with psychedelic guitar wrangling burying the drawled vocals… As well as feedback and freakout, elsewhere the guitars go more for chiming stabs amidst the hazy drone and hypnotic shaka-shaka-shaka rhythms. We’ll spare you the whole track-by-track summary, let’s just say that this is disc is ultimately epic (12 minute title track!), echoey (everything, all the time), often quite pretty (like the lulling swells of ‘See Through You’), and definitely propulsive. For fans of the likes of Loop, Can, and all the sundry other rad bands mentioned above. Tune in, turn on, oscillate!!!

At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.

Tags: Album of the day, All Time Low Productions, Aquarius Records, Demian Castellanos, Kraut Rock, Motorik, psychedelica, space rock, The Oscillation, Veils

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 at 1:57 pm and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.