new MP3: Helplessly Young
One of Denmark's most promising exports, the art-pop band Oh No Ono is offering another free MP3 of Eggs track, "Helplessly Young," via My Old Kentucky Blog. They made three videos for the song, check out our favorite here.
Praise for the band has come from the likes of SPIN, MOJO, Rolling Stone.com, Filter, Nylon, Pitchfork, Spinner, Under The Radar, The Quietus, Brooklyn Vegan, Fluxblog, My Old Kentucky Blog You Ain't No Picasso, Drowned In Sound, among many others.
SPIN (Review; Jan/Feb issue) says, "Imagine if the strangest folks behind the sunshine pop records of the '60s swallowed Syd Barrett's LSD stash and rocked out underwater with the Electric Light Orchestra while breathing helium. Then envision something even more fantastical." RollingStone.com (see 12/3 news) featured the band in it's Hype Monitor column, and had this to say, "Though Oh No Ono does occasionally kick up a herky-jerky new wave ruckus, we suggest starting with the hushed, lovely "Swim," which is 300 percent winter madrigal - the sound of stirred cider and cinnamon." FILTER-mag.com exclaims (see 12/4 review), "This is psychedelica at it's cinematic best." And finally, Under The Radar (Review; Winter issue) said, "The second album by this Danish five-piece is the first to be released in the U.S., and it's about time. Oh No Ono creates fantastical, experimental pop that knows no boundaries."
Oh No Ono recently released their single and video for Eggs lead track "Swim,". "Swim" is a sublime track that weaves orchestral instrumentation, guitars, and piano, over a sturdy rhythm section and anchored by an otherworldly falsetto. The end result yields a rewarding pop lullaby that is beautifully subtle, yet slightly unsettling. "Swim" was directed by Danish filmmaker Adam Hashemi, who harnessed the eerie feel of the song, into an entirely unique and unforgettable video. The clip managed to top Pitchfork.TV's most viewed videos this past summer.
Oh No Ono Swim from Adam Hashemi on Vimeo.
Oh No Ono is gearing up to release Eggs, its full-length U.S. debut, January 26, 2010 via Brooklyn-based Friendly Fire Recordings on CD and Digital formats. The album will also see release via Morningside Records in Denmark and worldwide via The Leaf Label. Oh No Ono will celebrate the release of Eggs, beginning with a visit to New York in January. Scheduled appearances include Mercury Lounge on January 27 (with Bear In Heaven), and Union Hall on January 28. The band will then hit the road a few weeks later, for a more extensive tour of North America, which includes appearances at the 2010 SXSW Festival.
"Imagine if the strangest folks behind the sunshine pop records of the '60s swallowed Syd Barrett's LSD stash and rocked out underwater with the Electric Light Orchestra while breathing helium. Then envision something even more fantastical." - [Review - Jan/Feb] SPIN
"Though Oh No Ono does occasionally kick up a herky-jerky new wave ruckus, we suggest starting with the hushed, lovely "Swim," which is 300 percent winter madrigal - the sound of stirred cider and cinnamon." - [Hype Monitor] ROLLINGSTONE.COM
"As with every track on the Danish ensemble's forthcoming album, Eggs, "Internet Warrior" is immense, ornate, and majestic." - [Track Review] PITCHFORK
"Their album Eggs was recorded in settings ranging from cathedrals to bathtubs, and has as broad of a stylistic range, evoking comparisons to both MGMT and Billy Corgan. But their grandiosity anchors the record. Through the Middle Eastern firq violins in "Eleanor Speaks," the haunted cathedral bells in the masterpiece "Swim," and the childish choir in "The Tea Party," crescendos balloon into a helium delirium. This is psychedelica at it's cinematic best." - FILTER-MAG.COM
OH NO ONO
"Eggs"
(Friendly Fire Recordings)
1.26.2010
Oh No Ono is an experimental pop quintet from the tiny Danish town of Aalborg. Their music, intricate and other-worldly, defies conventions and expectations (and some-times gravity). The ten dense, hypertextured sour-sweet- sad opuses found on their US debut album, Eggs, are truly breathtaking to behold; the band creates bewitching pop symphonies that unfold themselves more with each successive listen.
Already stars in their home country of Denmark, Oh No Ono (which consists of Aske Zidore, Nicolai Koch, Kristoffer Rom, Malthe Fischer, and Nis Svoldgård) has capitalized on a wave of Scandinavian press, touring extensively, and receiving surprising amounts of radio and video airplay for a group so focused on an aesthetic of capriciousness and experimentation. After receiving the "Breakthrough of the Year" award from the DR (the Danish equivalent of the BBC), the band jumped into the Scandinavian festival circuit, drawing the attention of, among others, NME, who said of the band: "[T]hey sound like Devo sticking their fingers in a powersocket... at a helium balloon factory... on the moon."
But the members of Oh No Ono were always trying to attack something bigger. And Eggs, their US debut on Brooklyn-based Friendly Fire Recordings, is nothing if not bigger - it is nothing short of virtuosic. To record the album, the band locked themselves away in a small country house on the Danish isle of Mon for nine months.
And yet Eggs is the anything but claustrophobic; reaching beyond traditional guitar/bass/drum textures, the band weaves myriad environmental sounds, samples, and nonstandard instrumentation into the mix. The sound of bird flocks taking flight are followed by woodwind players. Percussion is played on a water-filledtub. Elephants are heard, being elephants. A massive choir of Oh No Ono's friends sing along with the organ in a
300-year-old church.
Which is not to say the band spent all nine months cuddling trees and Pinking their Floyds. Like their contemporaries Animal Collective, the propulsive yet fundamentally beautiful pop Oh No Ono creates ties together all the ear games. Eggs' vivacious, even lusty approach to songcraft is the trademark of a band determined to approach pop music via the hard road, without ever losing track of the fact that they are creating pop music. From the shimmering textures of "The Wave
Ballet" to the operatic splendor of "Icicles", from the cacophonic underwater pop of "Eleanor Speaks" to the falsetto singalongs of "The Tea Party," this is a band whose command of melody is superlative, and whose ability to channel and transform their myriad musical influences into something genuinely unique and entrancing is thrilling.
Other talented artists have begun to take notice of Oh No Ono - the packaging for Eggs, lovingly crafted by Malene Mathiasson, features embossed, egg-shaped artwork and a series of darkly sexual, mix-and-match paintings that would do Francis Bacon proud. And the aesthetically beautiful - albeit slightly disturbing - video for lead single "Swim," directed by rising Danish director Adam Hashemi, managed to top Pitchfork.tv's charts (Tobias Stretch, whose video credits include Radiohead's "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," is already hard at work on a new video for the band). But ultimately it's the songs on the album - bizarre, melodic, catchy, beautiful - that make Oh No Ono shine. There are wonderful hatchlings waiting to emerge from Eggs.
"The second album by this Danish five-piece is the first to be released in the U.S., and it's about time. Oh No Ono creates fantastical, experimental pop that knows no boundaries." [Review - Winter Issue] UNDER THE RADAR
"It starts as a Blonde Redhead track filtering up from out of an aquarium and then crescendos to a brash, booming sound that would be more at home as the finale piece of a '70s film soundtrack" - [Video Post] MTV IGGY
"Eggs is a fantastic record and this isn't even close to being the only good song on there - the whole thing is a gem." - [Track Review] YOU AIN'T NO PICASSO
"As ornate as the arrangement may be, the most beautiful part of the song is the chorus, which washes over like cool waves, a melodic turn of nearly child-like simplicity in the middle of this epic piece." - [Track Review] FLUXBLOG
"They've both got otherworldly vocals and a sound that leans towards the epic side. But where Mew are fully in the rock world, Oh No Ono are harder to categorize. Eggs is all over the place -- you get honey-glazed pop, angular new wave and, on their current single "Swim," hazy grandiose-ness a la Grizzly Bear." - [Show Preview] BROOKLYN VEGAN
www.myspace.com/ohnoono
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