WHERE WORDS DO NOT REACH

A matured but fresh music compilation for over forty years, filled with speedy groove like typhoon with bright lightning. Their newest creation "Where Words Do Not Reach" released in 2015 sounds like a novel sound explosion by a young promising act, and at the same time, like a mellow but a tad mischievous musical vibration by a veteran. Yes OHO can be called as one of avantgarde / psychedelic progressive vanguards founded in mid 1970s in Baltimore, but we cannot help feeling curious why no old-fashioned nor elderly texture be around them. Their magnificent intention for grabbing innovative musical method or impressive sound structure is, and will be kept in their open mind.

It's sorta pity their playing style, simpleness of creation, or composition method could not be thought progressive (I'm afraid freaks of so-called progressive rock nowadays could not understand their innovative points of musical view indeed), but without any suspicion they ring our bells along with funny, funky, and cynical melodic logic like Zappa, that obviously should be stuffed into short song stories of theirs. Guess there are always plenty of substantial or psychological hints for their bulky, massive creativity around them, and they would have got and digested precious material smoothly and swiftly. That's the reason why they have no authentic nor legendary vein in their creation but magmatic attachment for innovation and pleasure.

Let me say OHO can be interpreted as acronyms of "originality, humanity, and opacity" (sorry for my cheep cheesy joke), and I do hope they will be active, aggressive, and anti-conservative ... maybe not only me.

Three albums in 40 years (one still to be added to the site). Thos old chaps are very skilled and the fact that they can do "Avantgarde" at their age is really significant. Anyway, when they released their first album there wasn't a clear distinction between subgenres, and probably there's not one even today.

But this means that 40 years of material written and collected for this 2015 release aren't limited by labels. In the album there is sme avant noise, but also a track like "Nazi Dog Jam" which is very reminding of the early Pink Floyd (Ummagumma/Meddle period). There's a sort of catchy Calypso on "House Party" and "I Could Not See Until I Opened My Eyes", and all extremely well played and arranged, even when it's clearly a long bluesy jam. The short "Peradam" could be added to a newage compilation, "Aubrey Circle Dance" has some funky.

So there's a lot of everything and this album is surely worth to be carefully listened. The mixture of "easy" and "challenging" tracks, well...not too much challenging really, can make it result a bit "disconnected", but this is the effect of having recorded material coming from different period in over 40 years.

This is a band that would have deserved a bit of success. I don't know what the band members have done out of those three albums. There's no track of other recordings or collaborations with other artists, at least for what I know. Anyway this is a very good album which can0t have from me less than 4 PA stars