Art As Catharsis is proud to announce the release of Omahara’s new record Upsilamba – an avant-garde, deconstructionist evolution for one of Australia’s most innovative heavy acts.
On Upsilamba, Omahara experiment with their dark, heaving style of ambient drone by applying cabaret-inspired elements to their music. Performers such as Eartha Kitt, Justin Viven Bond, Taylor Mac, Peter Allen and more have served as a well of inspiration for their recent live performances along with Upsilamba itself – defined as a soundscape where catatonic deconstructionism is the main actor in the band’s post-apocalyptic performance.
Due to the nature of Upsilamba’s abstract experimentalism, few bands can truly compare to the complexity and ingenuity that the record displays. However, those who can picture a matrimony of Sumac’s harsh tone, Sonic Youth’s lengthy noise experiments and Scott Walker’s baffling lyricism may find Upsilamba to their taste.
“We felt as a band we were no longer in the space required to produce the types of sounds and experiences from our past ventures,” begins Lynch, “so we were looking to move forward and perhaps explore something we found to be more engaging both socially and personally. Hence I think this is why it has the deconstructionist feel, we are deconstructing our own past as a band and this lead onto further notions of personal and social deconstruction.”
While the record itself consists of four untitled tracks, Upsilamba’s first single is a musical interlude. Compared to the hellish yawns of the guitar on the preceding track or the violent shouting of numbers yet to come, this small, haunting and minimalistic piece is nothing more than a few echoed and strangely tuned chords – a small eye of silence in the midst of the storm.
“The first short musical snippet acts as an interlude on the album,” says Lynch. “It’s a breath taken in the midst of an act aimed to shed stolen and appropriated forms of cultural influence, it’s the sigh or moment of reflection, perhaps anticipation before a child hands back a toy forcefully or deceivingly removed from a sibling. It’s an interpretation of Upsilamba – a word made up by Vladimir Nabokov, in his book Invitation to a Beheading. The word is one which captures the essence of a feeling. There are so many interpretations out there. It relates for the band, to the desired outcome or purpose we personally each attain from the performance which is a form of ritualistic shedding.”
Upsilamba is exactly that – a ritualistic shedding of past elements before a stunning metamorphosis into the new. A record that balances harsh, untamed noise with sweeping rhythmic mellows, covering wild new territory but never once over-extending itself. If this record proves one thing, it’s that the unpredictable can cast a shadow of grace, the incomprehensible can offer a meter of education and that the art of composition can create an abstract performance as viscerally physical as any play.
