the corner office

Cliff used to make much of the 'music you need to give some time to get into'. The theory being that there's a lot of stuff out there that at first 100 listens you'll probably detest because all the 'features' one usually associates with the concept of 'music' are absent. But on the 101th listen, it might start to make sense. I've kind of agreed with that, and there is some truly weird stuff in my CD collection.

I have to feel that this is exactly what Oneida want you to do with their latest album, Each One Teach One. For the most part the tracks are pretty standard (if that's possible) psychedelic rock. But there's the 14-minute opener called 'Sheets of Easter'. And apart from an intro, and 3 or 4, shall we say, one-beat breathers, the track is exactly the same piece of music over, and over, and over, and over again. Yep, that's organ, guitar riff and rhythm section playing the same droning phrase for 14 solid minutes. Either these chaps were bored senseless, they were tripping out of their skulls, or there's something going on that us mere mortals aren't getting.

Of course, having the album loop on the earphones as I'm working, the track keeps coming back, as background noise. At some point it starts melting into your brain and you realise, oh, ok...

I went out and did some googling, always curious to find at least one person to turn around and say 'bollocks', what are these people on? That didn't happen. I did find a review which I think pretty much covers it:

And when it was time to say goodnight, they thought they'd end the show the only way they knew how: "Sheets of Easter." "Just tell us when we're done," Fat Bobby quipped before the tune began. "You've got to look into the..." Chaos erupts, jumping bodies all around, those who can be bothered to join in are chanting, "light light light light night night night night" and countless variations thereof. As I've said before in discussing the same song, the effect from "Sheets of Easter" is just disorienting, the mind attempting to understand this procession of repetition, a constant stream of monotony that unveils subtle shifts beneath the surface, all being blasted full force directly into the nerve endings with no way to deaden the impact.

Yeah...

I stumbled across Oneida at the excellent epitonic.com website, and had established an affinity for what Oneida music I could dredge up before Cliff mentioned an interest. One took some comfort in finding something new before Cliff did. The last we spoke, he was trying to pull Each One Teach One down via Soulseek. I wonder whether he ever did manage to give the album a listen.