OCS
3 & 4 (Narnack Records)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

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The low fidelity revolution isn't like others; it's progressed slowly, like a beer-bloated freshman, and made gradual steps with every single garage 4-track record that leaks itself onto the market. As it flourishes, it seems to run contradictory to the iPod boom: kids continue to collect more clean, stream lined formatted music at light speeds while an entire generation continues to work on muddying up the spit and polish fetishists.

Between when the hulking beast of Folk Implosion was born and slumbered toward today, the world outside has seemed to pass the revolution by.

And just when it seems that the beast is slumbering toward another summer of saccharine pop and hip-hop records, it rears its head in the form of OCS and the record 3&4, another uniquely style-free offering from Narnack Records. A double disc filled with stew pot songs and sonic bouillon, the OCS tick and tock between punk and rock like an outfit unaware of the concept of clean genre; it might all be so simple, and then again, it could be a dizzying genius of perceived stumblebum. In one way 3&4 could be something of a score piece to a month of debauched dumpster diving, and in another, it feels as harmlessly mannered as a pair of college DJ's goofing on a late night radio station safe from the FCC. Songwriting themes and chord progressions repeat, skew from the center disobediently, and then resume with a transient zeal.

Either way, the OCS come out of nowhere with a fiercely unifying piece of artful noise with 3&4 and in their own quiet, inauspicious manner, push that shy rebellion a little further on toward the fall.

© 2005 - Erick Mertz