Review: The Octopus Project - Hexadecagon

Anybody who has witnessed The Octopus Project live can vouch that they are about the most fun you can have with an instrumental band; theremins, instrument-swapping and big balloons are the order of the day when the Texas four-piece come to town. Their music too is never lacking in colour and vibrancy; with their amalgamation of post-rock with noisy electronics, the band occupy a similar musical territory to Toronto's Holy F*ck, successfully avoiding the po-faced pitfalls of many of their contemparies; their sugar-coated sound is as likely to appeal to fans of Deerhoof as Explosions In The Sky.

But on their fourth album Hexadecagon, the band have taken a turn for the serious. Comprising just eight songs, many stepping over the 6-minute mark, the album sees the band attempt more focused, patient song-writing, cranking the songs up gradually in true post-rock fashion. Don't expect to find any two-minute blasts of hyperactivity in the vein of Truck here. Not surprisingly, Hexadecagon takes a lot more listens to fully engage with, and annoyingly some of the material refuses to ignite at all. After the high-tempo and yet somehow tentative piano-led opener Fuguefat, Korakrit simply kills the initial momentum, never lifting itself beyond anything other than pleasant background music.

It's this lack of immediacy compared to their previous work that makes it all too easy to dismiss Hexadecagon on the first few listens - I know I nearly did - but sticking with it yields its rewards. Toneloop's ghostly wordless vocals and reverberating guitars are a reminder of The Octopus Project's ability to create haunting atmospherics. Both Glass Jungle and  Hallucinists, the most inherently Octopus Project-sounding songs here, are rich with the usual twinkly effects and electronic pyrotechnics that suggest the band are still hitting the E-numbers pretty hard. Album centrepiece Circling peters out over its final four minutes, but not before delivering six minutes of jackhammer beats and rippling piano chords, and whilst the closing Catalog builds in logical fashion, its last few minutes of crash-bang-wallop still satisfy.

Hexadecagon sees the Octopus Project mature their sound, and for the most part it's a success. Its not without its growing pains, but a few different shades of grey amongst their broad pallette of colours hasn't caused them the harm you might expect.

75/100