This is music for mushrooms. Warm, damp, and dark textures echo throughout the tracks – it is disgustingly organic.
Archie Marshall’s voice has been the ultimate driving force of his records, the backing often finding its way to being a meandering trip hop take on the ambient guitar music of Vini Reilly.
The Ooz changes that. With heavily post-punk and blues-inspired dark, beachy riffs, a funk rhythm section, and an improv sax player found on social media, you’re forced to listen to those sticky melodies whilst the zombie fungus sax grows from your skull and pushes you up until the end.
Archie croons out stories of insecurity, depression, worthlessness, but also lust, confidence, and suave; all above the mushroom punk that slithers between trip hop, surf rock, and nu jazz throughout the record. The production muddies everything into a beautiful swamp, an abstract thought, feeling, or illness caught by the mellow but disturbing sounds, wrapped up in the hook-filled croons and saxophone moans, and grown into The Ooz.
[Tess Dawson]
qmunicatemagazine.com 