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One day, Autechre said that the biggest challenge in their way of making music was to create tracks that evolved in tandem with their thought processes, adapting them accordingly. For Otto Von Schirach, however, the intent is to "reach new levels of thinking, using more of my brain than most people do".
The third and final chapter of the "Chopped Zombie Fungus" series, "Earjuice Synthesis", may not be the pinnacle of his work, but it is of the aforementioned series (which we have already discussed here and here), confirming once again, if it were needed, that the damn intent has been achieved. Continuous research, experimentation aiming not to repeat what already exists, constant injection of new ideas and never-before-heard sounds, escaping any sort of label, are the other dictates that the Miami genius has always followed (and specifically in the early 2000s), without ever giving up on a healthy dose of circus/demented madness, which has become increasingly pronounced over the years, setting him apart from other forms of experimental electronic music, too often permeated by tedious academic pretensions, philosophical seriousness, or max/msp scientist onanism.
My words seem to echo the very concepts OVS might have thought of when his machines generated the now-legendary "Laptops & Martinis", which besides having a sick video by an evidently not-too-sane Jap, is nothing more or less than a devastating, absurd, insane track; a track that ridicules twenty years of IDM collective onanism, with its irreverent lyrics mocking the many nerds who have populated the scene: "Wiccan get together! idm! idm!! IDM!" usb! usb! USB!! dsp! dsp! DSP!! AIDS!!!" is the touching message of this modern Bob Dylan of electronic music. And if reading the latter might lead one to think of the typical absurd foolishness, especially typical of many brainless figures in the breakcore scene (a genre he would touch on a few years later), different is the actual musical content, as it is indeed a piece that has nothing to envy of much more celebrated experimental technical monsters such as Autechre, Datach'i, Empusae, Xanopticon, Hecq, Squarepusher, or friends VSnares, Devine, and Matmos.
In fact, listening to the indescribable two minutes of the schizophrenic-abstract "Facelift" vomit, one could say he even looks down on them: as I have previously stated, I indeed consider Otto Von Schirach the most complex of this group of A+ students, mainly because he prefers to precede the unimaginable structure or impossible sound with a mental process that leads him to experiment in free forms, creating advanced sounds or genius ideas based not rarely on systematically doing the opposite of what you would expect him to do with that sound or idea, often flipping everything in genius ways, effectively creating music that we could label as 'IntelligentDM' in a reality where, for years, what's intelligent at most is the one who refrains from buying yet another clone of "Chiastic Slide". That's what differentiates Otto Von Abstract from a Richard Devine, who yes... may give you the super cool-experimental-ultra complex sound, but in the end, you already know you can expect certain things from him (the digital drones, the metallic sounds, the convoluted rhythms...), just as from a Squarepusher or a Venetian Snares you expect the impossible drill or highly elaborate break. Drills or breaks that often can be related to a Petrucci-like abuse of the now famous LiveCut, while in the case of the Miami genius, not only could you never recognize the eventual 'source', but you can't even perceive what type of sound you're listening to (in this sense, a listen to the first and yet unsurpassed album is a must). If art means creating, Otto Von Schirach is indeed one of the most important artists ever existed, and not just in music.
The gangster of Digital Sound Processing. So our guy likes to call himself, a label never so fitting for a man who destroys everything he touches: he's doing it in these first in-depth years with sounds, ideas, and purely abstract solid foundations; he will do it in more recent times with genres and influences that draw from everywhere (from grindcore to death metal through dubstep, electro, hardcore, gangsta, and Cuban music nothing seems to escape Otto's steamroller) utilizing collagist-satirical approaches of Zappa/Residents origin.
His is a crossover for lobotomized masses, and it's with this trilogy that this style begins to emerge. "Earjuice Synthesis (Urinate On MCs)" is yet another stroke of genius, and once again a beautiful abstract video: OVS lays a pseudo-hip-hop carpet, a carpet obviously dirty. With shit, vomit, phlegm. It's a demented and grotesque track, owing much to the most derisory Frank Zappa as well as the most erratic Patton, but also to the trash of Maria De Filippi, boasting a hometown fair madness, with singing that says Beefheart but also says Mariano Apicella, with the usual assortment of gurgles, unusual sounds, and reckless digital massacres. After all, the character is also this, a living Jeckill&Hyde, the perfect middle ground between the sharpest avant-garde and the dumbest cartoon.
Only the idiot side in the case of "Whip Me Down" (lyrics/beats Miami bass so trashy and tacky they make the 2LC like the most committed singer-songwriter), while "Isla de la Crica" is probably one of the sickest tracks the human mind has ever conceived, a subspecies of tango/porn/hip-folk with no sense, one of those things you listen to and maybe think "what the hell am I listening to?! Wouldn't the reassuring choruses of The Beatles be better?"
Hmm...
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