Molesome - Are You There?

 

Whenever Roth-Handle Studios cooks up something strange inside their laboratories, you know that Dr. Mattias Olsson’s experiments are out there when it comes to Molesome. He’s very much like a mad scientist by creating more strange inventions that is waiting to be unleashed. And he’s pretty much done that with the latest release, Are You There?

Listening to this album is like going through the structures of Hardcore Devo, Post-Punk, Chamber Music, Tori Amos, Bill Fay, The Faust Tapes, The Residents, and the independent music production library, De Wolfe Music. Mattias has followed Zappa’s advice by throwing the rule book into the fire. While we might abide by them, it doesn’t mean we have to follow them. For Mattias, he broke the rules, one by one.

Sometimes the grooves are trapped in this dystopian house that is trapped between the 1950s and the futuristic ‘70s. For Olsson, it’s almost that he had written the alternate score for the German Sci-Fi miniseries from Fassbinder’s 1973 classic, World on a Wire. You have the surreal Cinevox Italian Psych lounge take of Long Island, Booji Boy returning to the post-apocalyptic sequel from Tunnel of Love with Naturales while Mattias channels the Faerie Symphony-era from Tom Newman on Vernon.

Meanwhile Tanaka is speaking through the intercom in the styles of Laurie Anderson between Spacestation Funeral and Spirits before Molesome raises the roof on Tim (Original Soundtrack). And then, the nod to Delia Derbyshire flows in the string quartet in the melodic textures of Ziwzih Ziwih (OO-OO-OO) on Blues Soaked Hope before the string section takes us to our home planet with our Boxes.

Molesome’s latest release this year may not be everyone’s cup of Joe, but Olsson is always opening doors to see what the 22^nd century might be waiting for us. Challenging and insanely beautiful, Olsson is quite the mad scientist that we really need for many years to come in the near future.