| Issue
#76
July
‘05
As the sly,
tantalizing cymbals rise over the
dreamy, synth landscape, a smoldering beauty of bass rhythms part the
curtains and we are
invited into the candle lit bedroom by the lo-fi beats
droppin’ around a piano lounge
chord progression of passion and heat. Inviting us in to explain that
this Sexual,
neo-Jazz-Funk jam throw down is one of the most sensual and sexual
healings that has
flowed through our ears on a hot and steamy night in ages. During this
trance-inducing,
instrumental, sexual experience of personal euphoria, we are told:
“While
you were sleeping / Lovers made the sun rise.”
OHN,
a seven-piece ensemble from Austin, Texas, has just taken
Sexual Healing into the 21st century and beyond.
Using a free form Jazz-Fusion,
Goth-Funk style that captures the pureness and intimacy of 70s soul,
while introducing the
increasing abilities of modern studio and DJ style board manipulation, OHN
has
fashioned a simmering platter of forward moving experimentation that
has us in a tizzy.
As a loose concept
album, In The End, All Things Begin
sidetracks its purpose on Ijo
People in order
to show us the root of the music. In a Talking Heads “Remain
In Light” era
sound, OHN displays African rhythms punctuated by a
southside sax playing a jazzed
intro progression, fused with an Alan Parson’s style
techno-funk. Suddenly we are
traversing continents – Using a sound bite (by someone whom
I’m sure I’m
suppose to know about – but don’t), OHN
tells us of the Ijo people of
Nigeria whose nightly drum playing reflected the good happenings of the
day, and of which
their particular rhythm inspired the sounds we have emitting from our
speakers.
Now fully exposed
to what we can expect from this CD, all we can say
is “Let’s get it OHN,” and with Bubblegum
that is exactly
what OHN does to us. Boarding the disco/punk sound of
“Sandinista!” era Clash
and solid Bootsy Collins/Rick James era P-Funk and getting it on to Sly
and The Family
Stone’s rhythmic style of musical representation of love and
sex, OHN reaches
back to the 70s techno-disco groove and hits the modern dj/beats dance
floor mating ritual
in stride – “Don’t you love the
taste of sweat / to put you in the mood?”
Yes, we’re sliding, we’re moving to the sound,
we’re dancing and
groovin’, bumpin’ and grindin’ to the B3
organ that is as representational
of foreplay as the actual dance is. We lip synch along to the no
nonsense chorus, “I
don’t want to say too much / I just want to feel your touch,”
and scream in
ecstasy. Someone hose us down ‘cause this floor is sooo hot,
it’s on fire!
Tossed into an extended bridge of wah wah pedal, distorted funk guitar,
we connect with
and acknowledge the love that sits firmly behind the lustful statement
of “Fuck me
‘til I’m dead,” for it is the
music as sex and sex as music that allows
the passion to manifest itself into a beauty that transcends these
words. If this
isn’t enough to get your clothes off then you
shouldn’t even be listening…
For those that are,
Search the Heart for Something Real
offers up that cool down time that laying between the sheets just
afterwards represents. A
time of muted celebration that takes on a reflective quality that love
and the act of
physical collusion intertwine to inspire - an introspection of all that
has transpired and
that which may be brought forth from it. “As you
breathe your symphony / I sing
ballads to your dreams.” Swept into a future-esque
funk time warped around an
ideal, Search the Heart reaches a climax that represents The End...
As in the title, OHN
has constructed this disc as a parable to
human nature (and in fact, all nature) where the conclusion of one
thing almost assuredly
begets the beginning of another. Here, it is love, physical expression.
Discovery,
attraction, romance, passion, fulfillment, climax, conception - In
The End, All Things
Begin. Think of that as a concept. While the afore mentioned
progression stated might
lead you to think Birth, as in a child, try to think of it as Birth, as
in the start of
something new, something created by the conclusion/collusion/collision
of the beginning
elements of whatever is being presented/represented. It can be just
about anything, and
with The Birth placed in the
center of the CD’s cycle, OHN jumps
out of our sexual healing to take us to the birth of consciousness
forcing us to
re-imagine, to reflect, to re-examine the plight that got us here. A
dark rhythm-esque
beat of beats and synth stew jump out to take us down an until now
unseen demon path that
lurks just beyond the soul of our sexualness. Sucked into a bizzaro
horn beat, we spy a
slice of heaven with our ears tied in an ultra bondage of deep dark
suave sophistication
ultimately lighting up in a spectral joy. Torn at finding this
parallel, it is the
get-down organ and guitar that undercut the quasi-evil that attempts to
poison each new
beginning, but when the massive drums and beefed up horns dance tightly
in celebration
above the din as we approach The End, we understand the soul dance, and
why The Birth is
not the Beginning, yet the center of All Things.
Track 6, Talking
With Shadows, begins side 2 of the LP.
This song is so Shaft (Issac Hayes) that it brings tears of joy to my
old school R&B
soul. Early 70s R&B soul rocked my world and here OHN
rocks my world. If you
dig the ultra-cool suave sophistication that was early 70s R&B
soul (a la Marvin Gaye,
Barry White, Al Green, Sly Stone, Eddie Kendricks, Curtis Mayfield,
Issac Hayes, etc.)
then you can dig the chorus of hand claps that accompany the closing
dreamy symphonic
grace of the string section. Also lending itself to the dreamy
R&B soul pop is You
Still Haunt Me, which drifts out as the
compensation to a fulfilling recreational
journey upon the studio-tweaked vocals (God, I hope they can reproduce
this sound live,
because it would be so serious to see it performed) and awesome
turntable work, not to
mention the extremely provocative title line that proceeds a studio
programmed
re-actualization of the classic riff from The O’Jays 1973
Hit, (Gamble and
Huff’s) “Now That We’ve Found
Love.” I believe that there are certain
Hip-Hop artists that should look into the sounds that OHN
are achieving here.
Supernova
ups the ante as we barrel towards the end.
Truly a meld of musical synthesis, this intense quasi-psychedelic
futuristic view of
society is truly a statement of burning too bright too fast. But damn
if you can’t
dance to it! Take that all you Metal-Techno heads! This underground
sound is soooo
jammin’ that I could conjure the names of genre after
subgenre that this captures and
exploits to the fullest malcontent – Join us futuristic
funksters, this is so
tragically hip every musical genre snob and poser will love it.
Then, over the
darkness that envelopes the end of a supernova, breaks
the dawn. Dawn begins our ascent
towards the end by replanting us at the
beginning; while you were sleeping we entered a candle lit bedroom that
resides somewhere
along the route previously shown to us by Tubular Bells, Mike
Oldfield’s theme from
The Exorcist. With a rolling drum loop that defies categorization, this
synth-funk
creation awakens us from some dream-induced higher state of
consciousness. While lovers
are making the sun rise, a fury of music builds and blends into an
intense jam of orgasmic
progression to arrive at a new dawn of a brighter era. Perhaps,
perhaps, if we practice
harmonic love, we can succeed.
And succeed OHN
does, In The End, the final
track eases us out and thrusts us back in with guitar reverb, echo,
distortion, and
clarity all rolled into a sustained micro jam that wallows in a
Euro-techno-industrial-Funk just heavy and intense enough to make us
sweat, and just
provocative enough to put us in the mood.
“Don’t
you love the taste of sweat /
to put you in the mood.”
Let’s get
it OHN.
In
The End, All Things Begin by OHN
Now available for: $11.98 +s/h*
View
Shopping Cart / Checkout
Accepting Credit Cards and PayPal
*Shipping
&
Handling charges:
USA - $3.00
for the first 2 CDs
ordered,
Add $1.50 per each CD after.
Canada - $5.00 for the
first
CD ordered,
Add $2.00 per each CD after.
Everywhere else -$7.00
for the
first CD ordered,
Add $3.00 per each CD after.
|
