Oddfellow's Casino
Oh, Sealand!

This album here makes me think of a summer when I went to the sea. I mean, practically, I never go to the sea, but once there was a girl I liked who liked going to the sea, so as soon as I could, I would pick her up and take her to the sea.

It's probably a sad story because, like many other times, I wasn't able to maintain a relationship, struggling with what I consider my own material difficulty in having any kind of relationship with people.

Surely, it's a sad story because in the end, I fell in love. I mean, to tell the truth, I fell in love right from the start, practically immediately, within five minutes. But not her.

But it's also a beautiful story because love stories are always beautiful in the end. It means you feel something important, and this means that despite everything, you are still alive, even though at that specific moment you might wish you were dead because you feel like you're inside a hole as big as a cannonball.

There's a certain melancholy that remains, like when you watch the waves of the sea at sunset, and then you look beside you and she's not there.

Since I haven't been to the sea again after that last time, with this latest album by Oddfellow's Casino, I feel like I've brought the sea directly into my home or - better - inside me, letting it circulate in my soul directly through the cavities of my ears.

The new album by Oddfellow's Casino, the band from Brighton, UK, led by David Bramwell, is titled 'Oh, Sealand'. Released last July 7th under the French label Microcultures, the album celebrates the 15th anniversary of the project and presents itself as one of the most interesting albums for those passionate about a certain type of indie folk sound and atmospheres that may refer to certain 19th-century English literature and particularly curated arrangements like details on a film strip.

However, we are not talking about a conventional folk music album. Bramwell's musical project in this case mixes the taste of English psychedelic folk tradition of the sixties-seventies with a certain pop tradition in the field of eighties electronics echoing artists like Gary Numan, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, and even an intellectual psychedelia like that of Future Sound Of London/Amorphous Androgynous.

In my opinion, the album is ideally split into two parts regarding its overall sound. Although there is obviously a common thread that holds the entire project together, proposing itself with the same intentions of its 'founder' as an iconographic representation of fishermen's landscapes in the south of England, and that pays homage in the title to what would then become the principality of Sealand. More or less the British Island of Roses: an artificial structure created by the English government during the Second World War and occupied since 1967 by British military and radio presenter Paddy Roy Bates, who proclaimed the platform as a 'principality with independent sovereignty.'

Suggestions almost of a futurist character but painted with watercolor tints that strip away any warlike purpose from futurism and clearly distance themselves from various Marinetti, Depero, and Cangiullo, which are somehow further highlighted by the participation in the recording phases of the album of a personality as popular and at the same time almost mythologized as that of cartoonist and writer Alan Moore.

In practice, there is a lot to chew on in this album.

'Land of The Cuckoo' immediately introduces kaleidoscopic sounds branded Amorphous Androgynous, mixing reverberated evocations with an electronic almost funk. 'Sealand' re-proposes the same kind of suggestions but with the accompaniment of an arpeggio and a songwriting sensitivity worthy of Simon & Garfunkel played under the surface of the sea while underwater pulses of a submarine that has not yet resurfaced since the Second World War are repeated in sequences marked by time, and everyone on board knows nothing of what happened in the world, and perhaps they don't care. 'Down In The Water' is built on a funky groove crescendo, always with derivation from Future Sound of London, while melancholic atmospheres are typical in a song like 'Sons And Daughters of A Quiet Land,' always built on a guitar arpeggio and with an intelligent and measured use of synths and sonorities derived from dubstep without exceeding in unnecessary laments like James Blake or mannerisms that would deprive this album of that simplicity which is still founded on an important care for every detail and that in cinematic references plays almost like Morricone of 'Giù la testa' but under the sea surface.

'Swallow The Day' is an aqueous psychedelic ballad that returns to typically sixties-seventies sounds of the genre and proposes simple solutions again, but with an effective emotional depth; 'Mustard Fields' is an articulate composition of synths that ideologically harks back again to a certain tradition of suburban electronic music made in the UK in the nineties that unfolds into a kind of contemplative nature solutions or, allow me the pun, that refers to contemplation of nature. The attention to detail in this case is truly special: the reverberated voice, a true trademark of the rest of the entire project, distinguishes the sung part, until the closing, which is a kind of rock and roll played on a ghost ship. 'Danu' is practically the 'Atlantis' of Oddfellow's Casino and where Donovan meets the most minimal and simple electronics of composer Jean Michel Jarre.

After that, the album somehow changes.

'The Ghost of Watling Street,' the single that anticipated the album, is a pop-oriented song that actually refers to the less claustrophobic New Order or a sort of slow-motion and de-vinylized version of Gary Numan; certain atmospheric sets by John Foxx, but clearly without reaching those compositional heights typical of the former frontman of Ultravox!

'Children of The Rocks' is a pop-rock song in the style of Air: from this point of view, it is an unimpeachable song. Arranged in a simple yet effective manner and built on a powerful bass line, it is founded on Beatles-esque echoes from 'Octopus' Garden' or 'Yellow Submarine' and reverberated guitars in the style of the aforementioned popular French electro-pop duo. 'Josephine' is a small portrait example of Victorian painting and recalls in its arrangements the beautiful band that was Cousteau by Davey Ray Moor. 'Penda's Fen' again yields to the pop-rock taste of Air, while 'Blood Moon' mixes again Cousteau's pop fascinations with certain downtempo and folk singer-songwriter elements that become almost that progressive Pink Floyd typical of songs like 'Green Is The Colour,' 'Brain Damage'...

I don’t know if we're faced with a real masterpiece: probably not. But it's an album that evokes certain suggestions and melancholies that are typical of this transition period from summer to autumn, when, after all, you can't go to the sea anymore. And in this case - paraphrasing the great Prophet Muhammad, peace, and blessings be upon him - if you're not the one going to the sea, it's the sea that comes to you directly into your home and reminds you that certain things, in the end, cannot and should not be forgotten, but instead must be accepted, just as the sea accepts the flow of currents.