Hello, Avalanche (CD)
Hello Avalanche, The Octopus Project's third proper full-length on Peek-A-Boo Records, is a bold step forward musically and artistically for the band, whose recent successes include playing the Coachella Festival and several sold-out nationwide tours, receiving a proclamation as one of Rolling Stone's five stand-out artists at SXSW by senior editor David Fricke, and sweeping the Austin Music Awards (Best Experimental Band, Best Indie Band, Best Instrumental Band, Best Miscellaneous Instrument-- Yvonne Lambert on Theremin!-- and top ten placement in eight other categories!).
With ragged, furious distorted guitars at one end of the spectrum and the pure, luminescent tones of the Theremin at the other, the members of The Octopus Project mine a staggering variety of sounds in between (via strings, synthesizers, drums, glockenspiel, trombones, etc.), filling their songs with brilliant contrasting colors and cascading waves of sonic bliss. Although Josh Lambert, Yvonne Lambert and Toto Miranda each have their instrumental specialties, they spread ideas out on as many instruments as possible, each writing for and performing on any sound-maker they can find. And if the instruments themselves weren't enough, many sounds on the record were manipulated by the band to push them even further - inhuman drum breaks three layers deep piled over the original live drum track, a heavenly four-Theremin choir from a Wizard of Oz soundtrack that never existed, guitar parts mulched into bits and reassembled into a tiny Prince army.![]()
| Tracklisting | |
| Disk | 1 | |
| 1 | Snow Tip Cap Mountain |
| 2 | Truck |
| 3 | Bees Bein' Strugglin' |
| 4 | An Evening With Rthrtha |
| 5 | Black Blizzard/Red Umbrella |
| 6 | Upmann |
| 7 | Mmaj |
| 8 | I Saw The Bright Shinies |
| 9 | Ghost Moves |
| 10 | Vanishing Lessons |
| 11 | Exploding Snowhorse |
| 12 | Loud Murmuring |
| 13 | Queen |