Oslo Tapes - ØR (2021)

I have my private theory that if there's a name of a city in a band's name, the artists are not from there. And so Oslo Tapes are from Italy but they surely sound like they are inspired by Scandinavia. Their third album only builds on those inspirations with the title, ØR, meaning "dizzy, confusing" in Norwegian. Perfect word to be used here to be honest.

As it strongly suggests, Marco Campitelli and his band make a very noisy and form-fluid psychedelic rock, let's say noisier Rakta-like vibes. The only thing more psychedelic than the music itself is this sentence taken from the album's description: "[it's] a dizzying ride through a feverish dreamscape of imaginary Norwegian highlands painted in cubistic shapes". This music is all about the mesmerizing, trance-inducing guitar passages filled with feedbacks and reverbs. It's also so noisy you can feel it in your teeth, like grainy sand getting its way through your body. There are vocals as well, but they are withdrawn and hidden under the guitar haze, often resorting to whispering like in Zenith.

This works both when they decide to go on with a ballad-like dreamscape (Kosmik Feels) or a full-blown, drums-fuelled psych-rock experience - Bodø Dakar works especially well as the latter with its crazy drums-work (this is the Rakta vibes I sense so much), lively and emotions-filled chanting and tropical traces enrich the general atmosphere of this song. Or in the extremely engaging finish in the Obsession Is the Mother of All (that sounds like it was Ride-inspired perhaps). But the vibes of the whole album are best summarized in Norwegian Dream - the perfectly satisfying psychedelic soup of haze, I love it.

ØR costs 7.99 EUR.

Check: Obsession Is the Mother of All

Country: Italy

Genre: noisy psychedelic rock

Label: Pelagic Records

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