Austin Sound

Last week Pitchfork premiered a brand new Octopus Project video, and it’s a beauty. It’s another animated charmer, which seems to be all the rage the days, and despite its ghosts and bloody axes and sad looking people, somehow still manages to be whimsical thanks to Ms. Yvonne’s lovely Theremin action. “I Saw the Bright Shinies” is, of course, off of OP’s latest LP, Hello, Avalanche, and the video was created by Divya Srinivasan, who also did the video for Spoon’s “Everything Hits at Once.”

The Octopus Project is currently entrancing the East Coast, but will land back in Austin just in time for Fun Fun Fun Fest on November 8 & 9, which is coming up fast in just a couple of weeks! No word on whether or not OP will be bringing out the high school orchestra like they did at ACL, but we sure hope so. Check the video below:

Fresh off of their showing at Lollapalooza this weekend, the Octopus Project have a new video for their song “An Evening with Rthrtha.” It’s the second video from last year’s fantastic Hello, Avalanche, following the video for “Truck” last winter. The group is currently still riding their 7″ single for UK imprint with the songs “Wet Gold” and “Moon Boil.”

The video for “An Evening with Rthrtha” was created by Phillip Niemeyer from Brooklyn studio Double Triple and California filmmaker Ryan Junell, and is a dreamy sequence to stop-motion animation. Wait for the freakout about 2 minutes in for a real trip. OP won’t be back in Austin until their set for the ACL Festival at the end of September, but they do have some west coast dates former Sound Off featured artist The Diagonals. Check out the video below.

As we witness the continued decline of the recorded music object and the concomitant decline of the greedy music-industry shopkeepers who have made their careers ripping off artists and the public by peddling music to us in mass-manufactured form, it’s interesting to see how the artists themselves are adapting to the new musical landscape. A band like the Octopus Project, Austin’s premier “indietronic” band, might at one time have hoped to eventually “land” a major-label contract, in the hopes that the big tall building bastards in New York or L.A. could help them to “move some product.” These days, what artist in their right mind would even want to get signed to a major? What would be the point? Stick with a local indie label and just do the rest yourself, for God’s sake.

11/2/07
It seems the Octopus Project have found their zany-filmic match with the Zellner Brothers. The local sibling team of David and Nathan put together this video for OP’s song “Truck” off of their latest album, Hello, Avalanche, making the electro-bleeps the soundtrack for what appears to be a military air-show turned Dresden firebombing. The filmmakers have a number of shorts viewable on their website, which also discloses the interesting tidbit that “at the Florida Film Festival, David was urinated on by an alligator.” There’s even a picture.

8/1/07
With their third proper release, Octopus Project seems poised to cement their reputation among Austin’s elite indie groups, and now we finally have a name for the upcoming release. Titled “Hello, Avalanche,” the name seems to further confirm the influence of recording in the Northwest in February on the group. As Peek-A-Boo head Travis Hidgon revealed in our profile of the label, the album will be released as both CD and LP, with the digipak CD featuring a pull-out pin-up of the group. HOT!