********
The Drink

This album aims to rediscover the original content and meanings of the term "indie" regarding attitudes, compositional processes, and low-fidelity recordings. This project is called ********: it is a Scottish duo composed of Allie Ormstrom and the mysterious Ω aka "omega" (Edinburgh Leisure), and "The Drink" (Domino) has already been announced as their first and last album. Introduced by the label in December with the track "Kinderpunsch," which starts with "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" before transforming into dark and dramatic atmospheres wrapped in a bass line and synthetic combinations, distorted vocalisms, nocturnal jazz, and "After Hours" (Martin Scorsese, 1985) settings, "The Drink" is a humorous album akin to a black comedy by the Coen brothers, with a sound mostly borne out of an expressive urgency and almost cursory quality, akin to the recordings of Daniel Johnston or musical realities like Beat Happening and some offerings from Elephant 6.

The songs of "The Drink" are characterized by bass lines that are as minimal as they are noisy and enveloping ("The Drink," "Schweppes Bitter Lemon"), minimalist garage compositions like "I'm A Zookeeper (Not A Goalkeeper)," "Trish," "Bowling Green," "Readymade," "Scotty Water," and sometimes they reveal themselves as a kind of ragged spoken-word rock blues as in the case of "Comedian." Other tracks are even more experimental, like "Practical Song (aka The Logical Song)" that culminates in a sort of non-linear cover of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise" or "Signs of Life in the Computer," somewhere between a Kraftwerk parody and This Heat suggestions, and the lysergic cabaret of "Doberman," built on the omnipresent almost carnivalesque use of synths.

The atmospheres are generally dark, but above all, they are characterized by a certain dadaist and pop-art orientation as if confused and psychedelic images of all the colors of Andy Warhol's "Campbell's Soup" were passing before our eyes. It's impossible not to think of the incredible influence of Jad Fair and Half Japanese in their more experimental works, whose instinctive and visionary attitude here translates into a fun and seemingly nihilistic and indifferent 2.0 version, yet damn curious.