In late 2001, the reputation of The Octopus Project as the band that "hooked up their half-broken electronic shit all wrong" first attracted the attention of Peek-A-Boo Records. In the years since, the band has developed into a powerful and prolific group, both in the studio and on the stage, with three proper albums, a variety of EPs and hundreds of shows under its belt.
After releasing 2007's Hello, Avalanche, an engaging album that netted praise from Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Wired, Pitchfork, Stereogum and a zillion blogs, The Octopus Project settled into a relentless touring schedule that took the band to nine countries and a handful of major music festivals. As the band added thousands of miles to the odometer, long drives soundtracked by minimal classic composers Terry Riley and Steve Reich led to thoughts about how to expand the scope of their own endeavors. Already known for concise blasts of experimental pop and a vibrant stage presence, The Octopus Project wanted to create a deeper sound, a more enveloping experience.
As an early experiment, the band scored original music to a series of short, psychedelic films from the previous century and performed the sold-out set in a favorite Austin art house theater. The overwhelmingly successful shows prompted invitations for repeat performances and talk of taking the production on the road. But the band was still in search of something bigger. They wanted to completely surround the audience with sound and vision — total immersion.
In late 2009, the band took some time off from touring to start writing new material and tinkering with electronics, and Hexadecagon began to take shape. The band members quickly realized that in order to achieve their creative vision, they would need more than the standard two-channel stereo audio and single projection. They decided that eight speakers should be arranged in a circle surrounding the audience, with the audience in turn surrounding the band at the center. Overhead, the music would be accompanied by eight synchronized video projections. The performance requires an integrated eight-channel audio and eight-channel video system, hence the name "Hexadecagon," the geometrical term for a sixteen-sided object — a sixteen-sided audiovisual panorama.
However, the equipment to pull this off didn't exist. So they built it. Using custom electronics (The Bend Matrix) and pushing existing software (Ableton Live, VDMX, OSCulator) to its limits, the band spent the next three months writing songs specifically for an eight-channel surround sound system and shooting the accompanying video footage with Austin digital artist Wiley Wiggins.
The Octopus Project finally performed Hexadecagon twice to over-capacity crowds during SXSW 2010. The reception was emphatically positive. Paste Magazinesaid of the show, "if there's a such thing as a happiness seizure, be prepared to have one," while The Austin American Statesmandescribed the event as, "the trippiest, most elaborate thing the Octopus Project have ever done, and that's a very tall order." USA Todayranked the performance one of its top five shows of SXSW.
Buzzing from the performance, the band dove head-first into putting the songs to tape. After two months of recording in their home studio, the band members took everything up to Dallas to finish up and mix down with John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions In the Sky, Clinic, The Walkmen), who then took the sound environment the band had created and blew it up into a high-definition, ultra-widescreen sonic universe. The music is written to work in layers — originally for an audio canvas of eight-channels, but here re-arranged and re-orchestrated to create an engrossing experience for anyone with a pair of speakers (or headphones, ideally).
Hexadecagon, more than any previous release by The Octopus Project, feels like an album in the truest sense. It's not so much eight distinct songs as one epic suite with mood swings. The first syncopated piano riff of "Fuguefat" only hints at the intense, vacillating montage of over 40 interwoven piano tracks which later appear in "Circling." This fervor gradually subsides into a vast sonic landscape where massive subterranean tones call and respond, and a lone, mournful Theremin wanders the domain in "Toneloop." That Theremin eventually finds companions among the colossal, soothing pulses of "Hallucinists," and album closer "Catalog" just might be a millennia-old transmission from a distant intelligent life form.
Peek-A-Boo Records is thrilled to release Hexadecagon on CD, 2xLP and digital formats on October 26, 2010.
Discography
Albums
• Identification Parade CD (Peek-A-Boo Records, 2002)
• One Ten Hundred Thousand Million LP/CD (Peek-A-Boo Records, 2005)
• One Ten Hundred Thousand Million LP/CD
(White Wabbit Records [TAIWAN/HONG KONG], 2006)
• The House of Apples & Eyeballs LP/CD with Black Moth Super Rainbow
(Graveface Records, 2006)
• Hello, Avalanche LP/CD (Peek-A-Boo Records, 2007)
• Hexadecagon 2xLP/CD (Peek-A-Boo Records, 2010)
Singles & EPs
• Christmas on Mars CD EP (Soda Pop Productions, 1999)
• Black Octopus Lipstick Project Foam Party CD EP
(Peek-A-Boo Records, 2004)
• "Wet Gold" / "Moon Boil" 7" (Too Pure Recordings, 2008)
• Golden Beds Enhanced CD EP (Peek-A-Boo Records, 2009)