Car Alarms & Crickets

Octant's core is Tassy Zimmerman and Matt Steinke with some occasional guests, Summer Mastos (piano/synthesizer) and Pierre Crutchfield (bass clarinet/turntables). Matt constructs most of their instruments himself; light sensitive samplers, an electrified stringboard, frequency modulators, a random tone generator made from an old plastic bowling ball and the robotic drum set programmed to play itself.

Car Alarms and Crickets explores both electronic and acoustic soundscapes, landing at destinations both experimental and pop. On this record, Steinke¹s latest version of a remote controlled percussion machine (percussion automata) creates rhythms that raise the question: can machine have a soul?

Weaned on international female hipster totems like Nico and Astrud Gilberto, Zimmerman¹s voice is also more of a presence on the new record, especially on the playful "Mince Up" and the haunting "What it Was".

Despite it¹s amazing range of songs, Car Alarms and Crickets maintains a coherent theme, the interplay of modern structures and both electronic and natural chaos. Each song has an archival quality, with musical concepts layered and deepened by surprising contexts. From the groovy, witty, spacey sound of "Laquita Laquita" to the chirps and gurgles of the title track, "Car Alarms and Crickets", Octant has managed to produce charming, memorable tunes and mysterious sculptures of sound.

Seinke has played in bands for many years, most recently in the Pacific Northwest, with Mocket and Satisfact, though in 1999, he began to devote all of his energies to Octant. Steinke also produced Miranda July¹s record, "The Binet-Simon Test". Octant¹s debut record; "Shock-No-Par was praised for its instruments and its modern pop sensibility. Bill Cohen of Alternative Press called the album "a stunning hybrid of new wave pop hooks and primitive electonica".

"Octant¹s music has a downtown carnivalesque feeling, it¹s melodic and atonal sounds balanced on a tightrope," wrote Timothy Orr in Drum Magazine. Joe Gross of the Village Voice wrote, "Octant features a percussion robot, a random tone generator and even catchier songs".

Octant¹s instruments are mesmerizing to watch, with flashing lights and revolving, glittering parts. Steinke, also a kinetic artist, invents instruments that bear the imprint of Bauhaus and Dada artists, particularly Duchamp. When one sees Octant perform, the music takes off into another realm. Everett True of The Stranger enthused, "If I¹ve watched spellbound he multicolored lights and other-worldly sounds emanating from Octant¹s drum-kit, I¹ve watched them 100 times-in my dreams".