Om plays The Earl tonight (Sat., Oct. 17)
October 17th, 2009 by Chad Radford in Music news
For this week’s Vibe feature story I put together what essentially turned out to be a 900 word record review of Om’s latest four-song masterpiece God is Good, which was actually a nice change from the standard 150 words that our reviews usually get.
This long-form dissection of their new album happened en lieu of an actual interview with new drummer Emil Amos and bass player Al Cisneros, but not for any lack of trying. Truth be told Emil and Al did get back with me — after we had to go to press. I know… Om was formed out the ashes of Sleep, who set the standard for stoner metal with the monumental riff fest known as Dopesmoker back in ‘98. There’s a bevy of stoner jokes to made here, but who am I to judge?
Here is abridged version of the Q&A we did online, only minutes before they walked on-stage in Detroit.
Hello Emil. First, how did you come to be a part of Om?
Emil Amos: Om and Grails did a couple tours together where we’d often stay up late after the shows and talk a lot of random music science/philosophy. A couple months later Al called me out of the blue one day while I was at work and explained everything about Chris’ departure. We scheduled a time to record the Sub Pop seven-inch before we’d even played together and gave ourselves a couple days beforehand to put it together. After that he began to fly up to Portland and stay with me periodically while we wrote the record for Drag City.
Did you detect any backlash from Om fans when the line-up changed?
Sure, a little bit… But they didn’t really have any material to go on so part of the backlash was pretty innocent. If a random 10 second video of us improvising on a random night somewhere in Finland appeared on YouTube there were some people that took that as the band’s entire new direction.
Om, Lichens and Six Organs of Admittance play the Earl tonight (Sat., Oct. 17). $12-$14. 9 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-522-3950.
I didn’t have any reason to fear that my career would be judged on that YouTube clip alone, but perhaps that’s indicative of how people experience music nowadays… That’s totally fine if that’s how they want to judge music but I can’t really take the shit frequencies of laptop listening in general so I don’t usually bother with it. From my point of view, if I went on Youtube and discovered that a band like Dinosaur Jr. had an off moment for 10 seconds on one night in ‘87 it wouldn’t make me like their band any less.
Al Cisneros Maybe some fell off who thought it wasn’t what they thought it should be, but I’ve never been happier playing music. Emil’s playing style has freed the pocket to flow, to groove, which is paramount. We’re already working on new material for the fifth album. We’re just getting started.
Can you tell me about what you had in mind as you started putting together God is Good?
EA: It’s probably more apparent that Grails or HolySons tend to continually shift our approach or style. This is usually done knowing where the band is going next and we’re often tired of what we’ve just completed, so there’s always a pretty clear internal trajectory. Om is also always shifting and staying the same. Ultimately nothing we’re ever doing is truly a “departure” because ‘we’ are ‘us’… we feel unable to depart from the core of how we play and what we have to say.
AC: As always, we’re seeking to facilitate an accurate rendering of the music heard within. A continuation manifested at higher ground, without compromise – to exteriorize the stuff we hear. Thematically, well, it’s spirally ascending, on the one subject – The Reality, or God, The Light, It, That, He, She, The Absolute, there are many names for the ineffable Background and that is the theme all the variations converge upon.
(Photo by Jake hall)
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