Odd Nosdam
Plan9...Meat Your Hypnotis.

What would you say if I proposed an album consisting of fifty tracks with an average duration of one minute? You might think I've switched to punk-hardcore, or that the artist recorded the album during a stay in a psychiatric hospital. In either case, alas, you'd be off the mark. We are, in fact, facing an unclassifiable work that possesses only the irreverence of punk and stands out, instead, for its willingness to go beyond, in an attempt to question the very concept of the usability of music.

The author of this raving work is the American David P. Madson, known as Odd Nosdam. To many, this name might mean almost nothing, yet good old David is among the founders of the indie label Anticon and a member of cLOUDDEAD, a project that in the early 2000s was distinguished by avant-garde sounds, hardly labelable as hip-hop (the other group members are the rappers Why? and Doseone, two individuals to keep an eye on).

In 1999, a year after Anecdoticselfportrait, Odd Nosdam released his second self-produced cassette, Plan9...Meat Your Hypnotis., reissued on CD and LP in 2001. The self-portrait on the cover shows David with his unmistakable cap; in the background, we glimpse a room with nonexistent furnishings, except for a lit light, an illegible written manifesto/poster, and a starred and striped flag hung in a peculiar way (it seems to be leaning against two walls, vertically to the room).

Whether it's due to the incongruence between the rotated photo and the strangely "straight" flag, the nonsensical title, or the bizarre tracklist (the tracks are not only very short, but all untitled), we immediately perceive an unreal and dreamlike atmosphere, almost as if we were facing a parody of a musical album.

The initially intuited prank becomes evident when we start listening. The general effect is that of a chloroform hip-hop, lo-fi, and psychedelic. David's sampler "steals" sounds from the most diverse genres (country, indie-rock, electronic, old swing, jazz, soundtracks...), not disdaining absurd vocal samples including applause, laughter, curse words, and even a list of names of people in Spanish. To all this, add the fact that the samples, drums included, are often slowed down until they become unrecognizable, or filtered or played in reverse, complete with crackles, volume spikes, and more surprises.

The overall impression is of a true delirium, yet it would be reductive to consider Odd Nosdam's operation a mere joke, because the "plan" of the Cincinnati producer, as extreme and absolutely unjudgeable as it is, is not without appreciable concreteness, an expression of an artistic approach that may be irritating to some, but not devoid of interesting reasons.

At this point, we could proceed with an exhausting track-by-track or perhaps mention some beats taken here and there: nothing more senseless. What strikes about Plan9...Meat Your Hypnotis. is indeed the frame that holds together the universe of Odd Nosdam, a world where criticism of the major labels and defense of the underground coexist, together with environmentalism and solitude, love for music and post-modern excavation in its ruins, not forgetting Michael Jackson, the waltzes of Johann Strauss and transcendental meditation.

A crazy and lysergic mix, indigestible to some, but one that cannot leave anyone indifferent.