08 March 2011

The Oo-ray - winterbone ep (2011, Waveguide)

The Oo-ray is the solo ambient drone project of Ted Laderas, from Portland, OR, who claims an indefeasible love for My Bloody Valentine but just pretends using almost exclusively a cello in order to compose his own music, processing intensively certain layers and adding some guitar and tambourine.


The first track, "Hearth", is an absolute homage to his heroes and it sounds like a slowed and more depressive version of My Bloody Valentine. Hearing cello sounds emerging through the shoegaze magma is surprisingly refreshing.

The second track "Parade" is confusing and not really convincing, and the addition of tambourine is quite disturbing and relatively unconnected to the rest of the track.

The real and main interest of this EP is the last track, "Angle of Repose", which is a total enigma, It doesn't sound like you would expect it to sound. 

While My Bloody Valentine seems his motto, here in fact it would be Carissa's Wierd instead which he tried to encapsulate in his composition. It is absolutely a strange, incomprehensible and unexpected instrumental, the structure seems quite natural and logic at first is in fact looks like the product of a growing hazardous influence and of a totally aleatoric dimension, it is semi-improvised and haunted, both feverish and shaky, both utterly moving and approximative, both impressive and quite lo-fi. 

I'm not totally sure he completely masters what he is doing on this last track but if he can tame such a powerful impulsion and intuition he might have found his way.




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