The fact that something so lush and orchestrated, so organic and alive, can be drawn forth from a purely digital creative crucible, that sonic traditions can be remade in a new binary image, that the sound of the future, or at least one posible version of it, is found in the present, is testimony to Opin’s three members, for that is exactly what Landis Wine, Jon Hawkins, and Tori Hovater are found doing on their latest album, Embrace the Grift.
But making one instrument sound like another, using synths to simulate a musical texture, is nothing new; it’s what they were created to do. The art is to make that sound feel and act like the instrument it is emulating, or better still, create the sound of instruments that don’t yet exist, and maybe never will, sounds that can only be imagined —devices that only exist in the sonic, rather than the physical, space. All of which happens here.
So you get songs like “All Night Repeating” and its blend of galloping energy and shimmering washes, the urgent and the ambient locked together in common cause. You get songs like “JJ” and its lush, liquid, lysergic take on indie-pop, running on a steampunk beat and occasionally heading off into tangential territory and dark anthemics. And you get songs that pull and push between the squalling and the serene, the industrial and the exquisite, the digital and the human, such as “Exit Check.”
And throughout the album, we revisit the opening track, “Pinches,” which returns in short, ever-evolving bursts, based on its original theme – sonic motifs taken to their (il)logical conclusions.
Many will find the music here challenging, and that is the whole point. This is the sound of a band evolving in real time, a band that has thrown off expectations and fashion, not to mention conventional musical weapons, and instead creates music that feels appropriate only in the context of the mood and the moment, releasing sonic salvos as and when the time feels right.
Yes, this is a band dancing to the sound of their own drum, a drum built of zeros and ones. A drum that never stays with one sound or style long enough for even the deftest commentator to assign a label. A drum that beats a retreat from complacency and tradition and acts as a rabble-rousing charge into the digital unknown.
Okay, discerning music fans, it’s over the top we go!
