09 June 2022

OCH – Po Om Po (2022, LP Rocket Recordings)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Rocket Recordings

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Neon Violet Vinyl (with a poly-lined black die-cut inner sleeve in stickered shrink wrap and a download voucher)

Release Date: 27 May 2022

OCH is a new Space-Kraut-Rock band, started in 2014, from Linköping, Sweden. “Pö om pö” is their 3^rd album and believe me you need to read what it’s written on their Bandcamp in order to understand the kind of music they are creating and performing, …

“Hypnagogia remains one of the most mysterious and haunting daily states of mind. Moments of revelation are wont to traditionally hit us, particularly in the hinterland between dream and waking, and whilst hallucinations are a key element of the much-vaunted psychedelic experience, the first such taste we’ll tend to have of these in our lifetime, be they image-based, auditory or the afterglow of repetitive activity in the daytime, are in this realm, It’s this particular headspace that’s very much the world of ‘Pö om pö’, the second Rocket Recordings released full-length record from Sweden’s equally mysterious OCH.

Pö om pö (meaning ‘little by little’) is a journey further into inner space from ‘II’, the previous Rocket outing (which followed a 2014 cassette-only release). It’s a still more expansive and vibrant transmission from the ether which distills kaleidoscopic rapture and oracular intensity from a variety of sources. The excursions here are jam-based in origin but lucid in approach, crepuscular in aspect but uplifting in effect.

What’s mapped out here is a trajectory on the kosmische continuum that touches on the terrain of late -‘70s Sky records style ambience (Cluster, Harald Grosskopf) the more overgrown quarters of Swedish experimental prog (Arbete Och Fritid, Anna Själv Tredje) and the sun-baked lo-fi DIY cassette culture of the US early ‘00s (Sun Araw, Magic Lantern). Although the overarching mood of ‘Pö Om Pö’ is one of
blissed-out indolence, it’s stubbornly averse to the cliches that have beset the psychedelic world this century – no motorik dead-ends or tambourine-shaking two-chord hoedowns to be experienced here. Rather we’re transported to a landscape where drone-based ritualism vies for attention with Faustian abstraction.

Dwelling in a smoke-clouded glow that’s equal parts sunset gold and effects pedal red, OCH have here transcended all influences to creating a tapestry of potent psychotropic sound. A record in which new horizons open up beyond the small hours, and where primeval wah-wah-abetted skronk and mantric folk-tinged repetition can collude to reveal new third-eye perceptions. Little By Little, Pö om pö, these forty minutes are here to bridge the chasms between conscious and subconscious, and in style”…

Of course, OCH are inspired by Kraut, Space, Electronic, and Progressive, but they have mixed up all these “influences” and they have created a kind of super extra Droney Mind-Expanding Kosmische Head Music!

“Pö om pö” consists of 8 Cosmic Trips. Under a mystical electronically flavored musical background, the opener “Bolid” shows a unique melting style of Prog and Neo-Kraut, the music is instrumental of course, at some point, the soundscape becomes distortically Heavy with a Space-Rock edge, an opener that surely leaves promises for the following tunes… “Vadstena” has an ambient distorted kind of Proggy environment, slowly developing a phantasmagoric mid-70s Progressive Rock sound with an experimental futuristic edge… “Syzygy” is my personal highlight of the album. I can listen to it for hours and hours… After a long and rather complicated Proggy intro with a “melting” faraway sound of something that sounds like a bagpipe, the track progressively dives deeper, by now everything is covered with a colorful Spacey Psychedelic vein, this is Mind-Expanding Music, the medium you need to go to other dimensions, what a Trip! “Silverstjarnan” has powerful tribal drumming and some mysterious kind of ‘Reinassance’ keys, a creepy heavy delicate atmosphere, slowly diving into darkness and obscurity… “Isfalt” starts in a kind of spacey sci-fi futuristic way, you can trace elements from the German electronic kraut of the early 70s, though the track shows an unexplained Vangelis (“Chariots Of Fire”) charm, a strangely atmospheric and quite Space-a-delic track! There’s a lot going on in “Braviken”, a wind eerie kind of freaky ambient start with lots of effects, this is another weird-a-delic tune… On “Impetus”, the strange keys along with the tribal drumming are creating a ritualistic atmosphere, more Proggy and less Spacey, a mind-bending tune that dives into a wonderful, Psych obscurity… Eventually, the album reaches its destination (comes to an end) with “Ochra”, getting deeper into Space, into darkness, into Psychness, slowly becoming a trance-y electric Space Rocket! So, it seems that OCH delivered to the World another mutated kind of Psych Kosmische Music, adventurous music for the mind, the conscious, and the subconscious! Ideal for Mind-Trips… Get aboard… TimeLord Michalis