Perhaps no LP of 2012 took more chances than this one. Always-out-of-place soul-croons splayed atop spindly post-punk riffs, funk bass, shifting beats, legions of effects, and storm stress? Not what anyone would have asked for last year or any year, yet here ONO are, and there Albino was, dropped into the past from the future naked and confused like Kyle from the first Terminator. Perhaps that Pere Ubu has a thrilling new record out is not a coincidence, no? That’s the closest touchstone I could find (Wilderness, Xiu Xiu, and Blackout Beach also ring a bell), though the process of proliferation in the tape world has no doubt produced something roughly in this vein that I haven’t heard. You don’t even get the chance to catch your breath either, at least not until the third track, wherein ONO embrace a more barebones template and succeed at sewing subtlety into their arrangements. Take away the vocals and some of these tunes are Portishead-esque, while the singing reminds me of some of those experiments Excepter were into early on, not to mention a male version of Niobe. Three-hundro copies on white-flecked-with-black wax for you croc hunters out there.
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