Octopus Project
Hello, Avalanche

[Peek-A-Boo; 2007]

Styles: instrumental rock... yeah, that’s all I got
Others: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Tristeza, Turzi, Trans Am, Lymbic System, Neu! (but busy as hell)

Grant’s Incredible List of Incredibly Predictable Things, Happenings and, you know, Stuff:

• When porn actors grunt and say in a foreign-y voice, “That is booty-ful”
• 99% of movies
• Instrumental music
• Each and every conversation I’ve ever had with my wife
• The look on a stranger’s face when I ask if I can have their cheesepaper
• The inability of many copy editors to worry about anything save headlines and photo placement
• The way most instrumental bands build and recede over and over
• The amateur flow of articles that are supposed to be fresh and creative but end up being impossible to follow and just plain stupid
• Pressing the button on a drinking fountain and stooping down so the tiny pin-prick trickle at least touches my lips
• Listening to a Patton Oswalt comedy routine and soiling myself
• The way many instrumental bands abuse keyboards/synths
• The way the hot water in my faucet goes from ICE-COLD to SINGEING-HOT in .0000000000000001 seconds
• The way columnists always use one-sentence paragraphs
• The way The Octopus Project’s past albums have aroused but not ‘wow’ed me
• The way my friends always get dumped when their girlfriends get back from their ‘soul-searching trip to Europe’
• Finding a pinch of lint at the top of my buttcrack

Grant’s Incredible List of Incredibly Unpredictable Things, Happenings, and, you know, Stuff:

• The fluctuation of my weight, from flabby to less flabby then back to flabby again
• How much I love East Coast pizza (which may or may not affect the preceding entry)
• How much I love East Coast donuts (ditto)
• The fact that, with strident new albums from The Octopus Project and Black Moth Super Rainbow (not to mention the so-so album these bands made together this year), instrumental rock is back with bigger abs and a tighter ass
• The intensity of my Christmas-light-hanging addiction from year to year
• The next money-making scheme my buddy Isaac will pitch to me
• Listening to Hello, Avalanche over and over and still failing to remember anything about it, then listening again as though it were a fresh experience
• The number of bill collectors I’m going to have to stiff each month
• The amount of regret I feel for bringing a child into such an F-ed up world
• The degree to which I bounce back from feelings of regret when my little baby girl smiles up at me when she hears me play certain guitar chords
• The way the synths of Hello, Avalanche weave in and out of each other like fighter pilots at an air show
• The number of readers that will write in complaining that I didn’t really talk about music much in this review
• The way this review ends without warning

1. Snow Tip Cap Mountain 2. Truck 3. Bees Bein’ Strugglin’ 4. Evening With Rthrtha, An 5. Black Blizzard/Red Umbrella 6. Upmann 7. Mmaj 8. I Saw the Bright Shinies 9. Ghost Moves 10. Vanishing Lessons 11. Exploding Snowhorse 12. Loud Murmuring 13. Queen