Send "Oneida " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 In 2009 the Flaming Lips invited Oneida to play at a day they were curating at an ATP festival in upstate New York. That pairing felt like an inevitable convergence of like-minded talents-- two similarly wayward outfits naturally coming together. Both have gone though stages of late-career reinvention, both have a fondness for repetitive psychedelic rock music played loud, and both have demonstrated scant regard for conventional career trajectories. At that point Oneida were two albums deep into a proposed trilogy titled Thank Your Parents. The fact that they decided to play a 12-hour set, complete with a double drummer assault from Lips sticksmen Steven Drozd and Kliph Scurlock at one point, made a strange kind of sense. It felt like Oneida were in the process of untethering themselves from their own sound, of cutting loose common constructs that had been threaded through their prior work. In Absolute II, the third and final segment of Thank Your Parents, that evolution has been taken to its most far-out point yet.Of all the strands that make up the trilogy, which began with Preteen Weaponry in 2008 and continued with the triple album Rated O in 2009, this is the one that makes least sense as a standalone item. It's very much a part of a greater whole, a logical if somewhat obtuse and reflective way to enter the comedown phase after the wild diversity of the previous installment. With all three pieces slotted together, it's easier to process the other material. The studio trickery and dub-influenced tunes of Preteen Weaponry, which was split into three songs but designed to be listened to as a continuous track, now feels like a perfect ease-in entry point to the sprawl of Rated O. But finding a similar way in to Absolute II takes some work. There are no drums here and barely any vocals. Anything that could be defined as "traditional" instrumentation is largely absent. Initially, it feels impenetrable. Almost everything is locked in stasis, with tiny phrases and pulses occasionally prickling to the surface. As such, it's firmly rooted in the minimalist tradition. Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music" is a touchstone, as is Philip Glass's "1+1". At times it bears a similar textural heft to Brian Eno's work with Harold Budd on their The Plateaux of Mirror collaboration. In terms of eyebrow-raising deviations in style it's not dissimilar to the arcane moods of Scott Walker's Tilt and The Drift. Like Preteen Weaponry this isn't an album that needed to be divided into individual tracks, although there are four of them, beginning with "Pre Human". The opening is built around a single repeating keyboard riff that's lightly distorted and sounds not unlike something Martin Rev from Suicide might have left on the cutting room floor around the time of their first album. It feels like a reflex shift out of the jagged edges of Rated O and into calmer waters, especially when it relaxes into solitary organ drones and droplets of water-like piano plinks....full text |
| Thelineofbestfit |
| From time to time, when I’m a tad bored (no Come Dine With Me repeats on; run out of biscuits), I like to mess around on Audacity; a free digital audio editor in the mould of Logic and Pro-Tools and the rest. Armed with just an angelic voice, godlike guitar stylings and an earth-shattering sense of modesty, I sit down to a cheap microphone, record a little something or other, then mess about with it a bit; piling on liberal helpings of echo, reverb, phasing, compression, etc with a view to enhancing and refining my Daniel Bedingfield mk II bedroom-laptop masterpiece to perfection. Unfortunately, this messing about invariably descends into outright silliness and an inability to know when to stop, until, like a child that’s got tired of drawing on mere paper and decided to take their craft to uncharted walls, I’ve ended up with an hour of my life wasted and nothing to show for it but an unlistenable piece of self-indulgent rubbish. This is what Absolute II—the final instalment in Brooklyn stoner rockers Oneida’s Thank Your Parents ‘triptych’—sounds like. Well, I say “stoner rockers”. What I actually mean is “purveyors of pointless, boring Metal Machine Music-lite white noise”, because Absolute II contains nothing even resembling a song, let alone a rock and roll one. It’s a dull, useless, unholy orgy of migraine-inducing guitar and synth feedback and non-instrumental noodling—the sound of a group of bored, lazy, uninspired musicians trying to hide the fact they can barely be bothered to get out of bed in the morning and pretend they’re responsible for some kind of grand, conceptual artistic statement. In other words, Oneida have collectively become Tracey Emin....full text |
| Thedelimagazine |
| A fixture of Brooklyn's art scene since 1997, Oneida may be one of one of the borough's oldest continuing art rock ensembles. An institution of sorts, the band has always been out in front of the trends, from Sonic Youth-inspired noise to the complicated rhythms influencing a lot of what we hear today on labels like Thrill Jockey. For the last couple years, they've embarked on a hugely ambitious 200 minute, 3-part epic ambiguously titled album "The Thank Your Parents Triptych." The previous two installments have been high on concept, low on initiation. But with their latest record, Absolute II, the sounds I usually look for in this group are nowhere to be found. The most striking change being the total absence of drumming throughout. For me, one of Oneida's highlights has always been the frenetic energy of drummer Kid Millions, so to not hear his kit at all was an unexpected departure. After listening through several times though, I found the lack of rhythm beds and patterned hooks in these four tracks surprisingly meditative. 'Grey Area' for instance, makes me imagine an electric razor is rolling around my brain... (in a good way). Opener 'Pre-Human' hints at a huge sonic landscape, while maintaining a soft, relaxing pulse throughout. This is a physical record, and needs to be walked around in, lived in for some time before you're able to get a feel for its dense, complex landscape. Check out the the first single 'Horizon' at Oneida's bandcamp here to get an idea of where they've taken things for yourself. The album comes out June 7 on Jagjaguwar...full text |
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