Marco Oppedisano – Mechanical Uprising
Marco! Polo! I mean Oppedisano! The fourth installment of this man’s recorded life has arrived in the form of another CD-R courtesy of the OKS label. Aptly titled Mechanical Uprising, it’s overflowing with MO’s usual MO: overdubbed and over-the-top music all made by himself, except for a few vocal samples. Spread across seven tracks, the centerpiece of the album, “Seven Pieces,” is derived from electric guitar, bass and a grand total of nothing else. It starts off with held eBay, I mean Ebow tones and dry tangled thorns, then proceeds into tick-tock rhythms with heavy rock riffing, reverb daydreams, layers of heavy metal shred master leads, dreamy melodies, stately drones and big, bopping bleep-bloops.
In addition to guitar and bass, the rest of the album includes other (virtual) instruments, samples and voices. Kicking off with “Kickstart,” Marco copies and pastes layers of himself on distorted electric guitar, tossing off improv skitters ‘n’ sweet ‘n’ sour licks that could easily melt the Tootsie Pop right off a 1970s version of your face, augmented with more meditative volume pedal interludes. Down “Solitary Pathways,” we encounter chanting voices hidden within dark drones rudely interupted with shredding guitar outbursts sprinkled with Conlon Nancarrow-esque avant-garde piano plonk. The title track navigates its way over an atmospheric yet dramatic land o’ lakes submerged in metallic reverb, snuggly squiggles and slam dunk crab, I mean crash pads full of macho burrito riffs.
In “Clockwatcher I,” musique concrete explosions get impaled with rhythmic synth stabs, only to set off the World War III of shred guitars. “Clockwatcher II” sends you packin’ on a dreamy picnic through a patch of pickin’ (and possibly even grinnin’) jack of lanterns supported by a bed of low drones. “Clockwatcher III” ends the trilogy with a slightly more tuneful, marching riff imbued with urgency and smothered in a ton of reverb. Closing the album, “Nocturne” dims the lights as a minor two-note riff ambles down into a dank basement full of pinging delay pedal nightmares with descending flying saucers. Fuzz guitar workouts, deep space drones, acoustic guitar tangles and long reverb tails round out the huge sonic smorgasbord wrought by this Mechanical Uprising.
Label: OKS Catalog Number: OKSRNA019 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 14 Total Time: 51:11 Country: United States Released: 2010 More: All About Jazz, CD Baby, Last.FM, MySpace, OKS, United We Tab, Wikipedia
Text ©2011 Arcane Candy
Leave a Reply