"We've been trying to get along but there's too much talking and not enough song" Normally I like to make an indignant point about the problem with conventional pop music, but in 15 short words, O Fracas have done it for me. This is a band that understands the science of silence. Sounds are enhanced by the silence that surrounds them - This is what makes staccato so hypnotizing and why it's no coincidence that the world's most popular instruments are the ones you have to hit, tweak, scratch, poke and generally abuse. This is what O Fracas do, and it's beautiful.
The formula of the 'oversaturated wall of noise' seems to be the mission of so many bands, not to mention record companies. Instead, what O Fracas do best is to create a pebbledash of noise, an explosion suspended in mid-air. Every instrument cracks out like glass, with notes flailing across the octave and rhythms that stab in and out, stopping and starting on every bar with absolute precision. Instrumentally, they have a kind of spiky psychedelia that reminds me of Captain Beefheart (only much tighter of course) and at the same time they are reminiscent of more dynamic '70s prog groups like Camel and Caravan. Vocally in particular, they have the same sort of relaxed pathos that softens the peppery zing of the instruments.
Guitarists Ben Partridge and Alex Farrar form the backbone of the band, and they are vehement advocates of the necessity of argument, the theory being that the more they argue with each other, the more original and precise the final outcome (hence the name.) You wouldn't think so to hear their music - they maintain such a seemless harmony throughout all of the jerkiness that one would assume they must be on the same page at all times. I would love to be a fly on the wall when they write together, to see evidence that a match made in heaven has to visit hell several times to get some perspective.
This is very much their proposed angle - finding harmony in the conflict and riding the outward-spiraling paradox it creates. This can all be closely tracked in the post-structuralist maelstrom of their music. Sometimes it's one thing and sometimes it's another, and it mostly changes several times a second. The result is a band that tastes like the spiciest sausage you've ever eaten, and not the cheap, processed kind. The kind that's made from a thousand ingredients, and has to be wrapped in superconductive rope to stop it from burning through to the centre of the Earth. Great stuff.
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