In a few short years, Bristol's The Longest Johns have gone from singing sea shanties in a kitchen to International folk festivals, tours, TV appearances and a huge online following. The success of their first album 'Between Wind and Water' spawned the global viral hit 'Wellerman', which gave the band their first Top 40 single. Now, The Longest Johns have returned with a rollicking set of songs and shanties.
To submit or to surrender? Robert Johnson resident Oskar Offermann doesn’t have the answers, and that’s kind of the point. Things change: one moment you’re touring the globe as a recognizable face of one of the greatest clubs in the world, the next you’ve started a new life as a teacher. How do you handle that shift? On this record, Offermann doesn’t offer solutions so much as trace his own way through it, reflecting the whole process in his music and creative work.
Whatever the story, whatever the case, Oskar Offermann can still produce some of the most emotive, bleepy, strange dance music out there and this 12 inch is the proof. Sonically and conceptually it leans into that precise, melancholic German school: at points drawing from 80s wave and experimental music, then flirting with trancey motifs and closing in divinely crafted breakbeat. In just four tracks it packs in a surprising amount of functional range, exactly what you’d expect from one of RJ’s longest-standing residents. The A- and B-sides mirror each other: they open at full intensity, tempos pushed well past the 130 BPM mark, easy to imagine ripping through a peak-time floor – and still both sides land on something far more personal and reflective.
Even inside a framework of high-intensity club tunes, Oskar’s character shines through loud and proud. Think the slightly disjarring yet melodically captivating winds in the middle of the B1 trance induced number “Accepting”, or the masterfully paced build of opener “Planet Interface”. The same goes for A2 “Televise Improvise” and B2 “Sei mal nur lieb”: on paper they should feel like breathers next to the two behemoths, but they don’t. Offermann crams so much substance and personality into them that they become quietly dangerous. There’s that magical mix of squelchy acid, rough low end and naturalistic melodies on B2, and the relentless emotional drive of A2 “Televise Improvise”. Oskar is really, really good at making dance music irresistible.
Character, skill and honesty in one record, meant for the attentive listener and the brave DJ. A rare combination nowadays, get it fast!
Deliberately breaking all the rules Mr. Hornby once famously outlined regarding the creation of homemade (tape) compilations, Saroos’ members indeed had the term “mixtape” on their minds while working on their latest full-length – albeit in the hip-hop sense: a sonic snack box, interconnected shots from the hip, something that just came together and immediately felt right.
Whereas hip-hop folks nowadays often use the vacuous term “project” in order to steer clear of the ontological debate caused by the almost synonymous use of album/mixtape, Florian Zimmer, Christoph Brandner, and Max Punktezahl, otherwise busy with The Notwist, Driftmachine & Lali Puna, stick to the classics: their new 16-track project “OLU” (Off Label Use) is, officially, still an album. But it’s wild and vibrant like a mixtape, interwoven like its cover: a seamless burst of ideas, impulsively combined to form a split-screen snapshot of recent moments and momentums.
Re-appropriating the term “Off Label Use” – which actually means: using prescription drugs in ways that aren’t mentioned on the instruction leaflet – in their own “off-label” way, Saroos never sounded more loose-limbed and elastic. Whereas the trio’s earlier releases were rather conceptual and homogenous, “OLU” indeed has a more loose, spur-of-the-moment feel, a spontaneous force at its core. Checking the weighty sci-fi inspirations at the door, they use that Bomb Shelter-type of freedom to reinvent themselves at every turn, chasing sounds that happened to emerge in the group’s triangular energy field.
Kicking it off “with a killer, to grab attention” (Hornby/Cusack, after all), the massive reverb-stumblin’ adjustment between beats and bass of opening track “Quarantaine” cross-fades smoothly into “Humdrum Rolloff,” an early hint at the group’s off-label practices: the underwater creepers floating around here were really voices (mostly). From majestically built oriental sound-pieces (“Looney Suite Serenade”), synth-based “End House Mario” and a triptych of speaker-boxxxing gas lamp experimentations entitled “Cord Burn 1-3,” Saroos have rarely sounded this playful and unrestricted: there’s a new energy at work that welds all the different sonic playing fields together to create one continuous 40 minute mix.
For the B-side descent, “Tatsu Jam,” at less than 4 minutes still the longest cut, billows over the kind of sizzling hi-hats you’d expect to hear on real trap tapes from Hotlanta. A prelude to a bunch of quicker-paced instrumentals (“Scratch Pets”, “24h Love Gumbo”) and ambient sun showers, until the next “Plateau” (Mo’Wax vibes!) brings the beats to the fore once again (“Tomorrow’s Kudos”), and the ultimate “Whirligig” sounds like a mix of Oktoberfest 2020 and Johnston’s “Casper The Friendly Ghost” coming apart at the seams.
Whatever you wanna call it – album, LP, mixtape, project, who cares? –, it’s definitely a double A-side tour-de-force.
