We’ve been thinking a lot recently about the past and the future, and the spaces in music where those two intrinsically linked things intersect most clearly. We find the music of Os Ovni to be one of those spaces.
Download “Radioactivity” (Kraftwerk cover) by Os Ovni
The last thing we’re going to attempt is a description of the music of Os Ovni. We could throw around words like “spacey” or “electronic” or “psychedelic” or “weird” or “dramatically damaged digital detritus” and not feel disingenuous. But we’d also feel like we’re missing the point or that there may not be a point (which may in fact be the point).
Listen: All I can tell you is that I met a kid in the ninth grade who was smart, funny, troubled and way into some band called Kraftwerk. He played me “Pocket Calculator” one day after school and I thought he was nuts. I tried to turn his attention away from Kraftwerk and more toward, say, Krokus, but it was not to be.
If you would have told me then that in just a few short years I would be paying my rent by driving a forklift in an electrical supplies warehouse alongside a recently discharged Army soldier whose two favorite things in the world were Chaka Khan and Kraftwerk, and that he would ultimately impart upon me the joys of both, giving me the tools and inspiration to take another leap of faith in my listening habits and evolution as a nerd obsessed with sound … I would have thought you were nuts, too. But you would have been correct (and probably creepy).
And if you were to tell me that a number of years after that, I would be singing the praises of two Texas-based space cadets who had taken Kraftwerk’s blueprints and created something utterly weird, utterly compelling and utterly their own, I would have openly accused you of being nuts, potentially correct and unfathomably creepy.
Mama-mama, we’re all creepy now. Here’s to the past. Here’s to the future. Here’s to the sounds, the nutty, correct and creepy sounds of Os Ovni. Long may they evolve, timeless and obsessed with sound.
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
— “Awesome” Anaïs Nin
Revolt of the Apes 
Leave a Reply