Time is running out for your dear friend Strauss two-fold: First, I have to have anything that I wanted to review from 2013 submitted by FRIDAY (!!!!), and second, Ou Où, from what little Facebook rumors I’ve spied, appears to be on the fritz! One of the dudes is moving away from St. Louis or something? I dunno, none of my beeswax, but I figured I’d better take what little chance I had left to shed some light on their last proper release, which is a cassette tape on a label they’ve been with since about as far back in the Ou Où canon as I can remember. And as my typing fingers race to the finish line to get all my work submitted, Ou Où has been right there chasing me down. These “Geocities,” as it were, have volatile landscapes, all silicon peaks and valleys, circuit board streets with stoplights that never turn red. And the electronic duo keep all cylinders pounding hard throughout, the pace might slow at times, but the intensity’s forever cranked to 11 with the heart of the bass throbbing all along, pumping blood through the tape’s glowing, pulsing veins. Hitting on all the pleasure centers any fans may have recognized them for here-to-now, the duo drones where appropriate and cuts the beat into trigonometric shapes wherever else appropriate, but it’s best when they do both at the same time (which is, thankfully, the strategy for the bulk of this excellent album). Overall things are just tighter here, somehow the group harnessing their elongated forms into an almost-pop release that really moves along, no section dangling for longer than it needs to dangle. I’ll neither confirm nor deny the rumors I may or may not have started toward the beginning of this article about the band’s supposed non-future. Act now, buy some of their music and let them know you won’t stand to see them go. Together, we can all make a difference.
More about: Ou Où
