OHGR: SunnyPsyOp (CD on Spitfire Records)
This CD from 2003 offers 49 minutes of gritty industrial rock, and includes a video track.
Ohgr is: Ogre (aka David Ogilvie from Skinny Puppy) and Mark Walk.
A sultry miasma of darkly liquid electronics oozes into a hungry cloud that surges across the landscape, swallowing all audiences in its path. E-perc swarms flock like carrion round the edges of this attention-grabber, adding a rhythmic definition to the remarkably pop-oriented industrial tuneage. While the brutal tempos pound on your temples, serpentine keyboards immerse your entire head with relentless waves of acrimonious textures and grinding, shrill punctuations of electronic wizardry.
Meanwhile, Ogre's voice is harsh and passionate. Emerging from a sunken abyss, his vocals retain a subterranean mood that is ominous and enticing at the same time. Electronic treatments imbue his singing with a remote quality that allows it rage in your face while sounding as if it comes from a great distance away. A plethora of auxiliary effects distort sidereal utterances, generating a host of cybernetic accompaniments. There are instances when the vocals switch into a mode that is highly reminiscent of Eighties technopop crooning, blending Kraftwerk and Fad Gadget sensibilities that result in appealing mantras of unearthly disposition.
While hardly as abrasive as Skinny Puppy's tuneage, these songs carry an industrial aggression that masks their frolicsome demeanor, wrapping pop tunes in a shroud of sinister needles and embellishing the mix with sounds that can only be compared to paleontological screams. Tensely elongated tonalities growl with resonant bass tendencies, swooping out of the sky like blades of razor-edged sheet metal. Synthi beats conspire to enhance the already-bristling pit of percussion, transforming the crowded dancefloor into a caldron of gleeful pain.
This music employs a fusion of retro hooks and modern trickery to produce a smoldering sound that reinvents electronic rock as a genre thoroughly suitable for the new millennium. The songs will appeal to fans of the past as well as those who yearn for an inventive future.
Included is a four minute video for the "Majik" song, featuring darkside model animation depicting a hapless skull-faced hero facing corporate greed as he searches to "belong" in a decaying cityscape.
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