Octopus

Octopus Band Review Live at Re Play in De Pere, WI

By TJ
June 4, 2010
Great music can be as simple as three chords and a melody. Then there is music that comes in multiple layers. I guess in music sometimes you can get lost in the complexity of different textures, colors, and overtones of notes and rhythms. I have always been intrigued by mingling elements of music as much as I am driven on raw simple emotion. This mix brings me out to the Re Play Bar for my second viewing of the local band Octopus. Octopus is a five piece rock band with an unusual arrangement of guitars, violin, bass, and drums. While most of their music is rooted not too far off of an indie rock alternative style, they compose their music based more on feel and emotion rather than following a straight rhythm. Their songs are loaded with dramatic pauses, climatic sections and also a fusion of bridges, choruses, and verses. This is not straight forward rock and roll, it is far too imaginative to be that; it is something else, something original. Octopus makes a bold statement with their music; the style almost bastardizes itself from being anything potentially mainstream and that is why I love this band. In a world where we are bombarded with garbage advertisements that tell us what to buy, say, and do to be cool and fit in, there are still musicians out there that provoke the opposite, and a great many number of them have hailed from this area.

Octopus reminds me a lot of my early youth in this town when it was thriving with original bands. Octopus brings back the mystery, emotion, and journey to their live performances. Orlando diValentin plays rhythm on an Ernie Ball Music Man electric guitar that is loaded at the floor with multiple effects pedals that can make anything from ambient sound, to raw noise. Orlando's vocals, while in the higher range, are packed with raw lyrical emotion and distress. Nick Jones backs up Orlando on the guitar harmony parts and also ventures off on some of the melodic areas of the songs creating a dynamic wall of sound with his SG guitar. Robin McDowell is one of the more interesting ingredients of Octopus. She plays the electric violin adding an active overlay of a quasi gypsy sound. John Schniderwent plays bass and adds a warping bottom end with extremely creative bass lines and chords. Jake Jenkins takes lead on the drum kit and handles the tempo and rhythmic changes with ease. He plays with sound sensitivity in mind because of the varying climatic compositions and creates dynamic rhythms on his four piece drum kit. The thing I like most about Octopus is that the songs are built around a familiar alternative sound but every song twists that familiarity into a new direction. So every song they write sounds unique and the flow of changes is fluid enough to be listenable and interesting. The mood was very casual at the Re Play bar with quite a few patrons paying close attention while the others chatted away and drank their beer as the music flew over the tops of their heads. That is to be expected because there are only a few that understand this kind of music and can follow the songs from fore to aft, and for those that truly can follow it, fall in love with this band. Those that cannot understand it may just cast this off as dis-chord noise. I think Octopus has got a great sound, because music grows by expanding ideas and not by contracting them. You can find more info on Octopus by clicking here with a bunch of live video performances and a couple of demos that sound as if they were done very early in this bands development.

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