OPAK

Two sleepwalkers on a tightrope

CD/2LP, creaked

A clean hip hop beat accompanied by some synthie drones opens up this record. As soon as you hear the scratching-sounds mixed with gentle glitches you know you are in a new deal of cross-over. Coil meets The Neptunes in the Trip Hop lounge where they serve Tanqueray & Tonics without end. But this is a dead end, because this opener actually hides more than he is to reveal. Except maybe for the atmosphere, which despite the scratching is one of serious discussion rather than light entertainment. Because the lightness or careless reckon for fun, as would be displayed on any RJD2 record, is missing on here. Which makes for better close up listening, by the way, something that I wouldn’t recommend with RJD2, who is better listened to while talking to friends and seeing to it that the flow of T&T never stops.

Anyway, the duo of Arnaud Sponar and Julian Grandjean get into more serious musicmanship, when they start to really get into their version of post-rock; as if Tortoise decided to become an electronic music project rather than a band. As if Radian came from Switzerland and not from Austria. As if the soundtrack was more important than the movie (which is true, if the movie is playing in your head and is directly inspired by the music). While the triphop beat gives way to soft and delicate percussions prodding gently around in the foggy morning, it remains clear that basically, Opak are definitely a band in the old sense. But one more keen on producing a soundtrack to an image, a feeling or a place than on giving a great rockshow for a night out. Maybe for the hangover the next morning, but only if you have slept off your hurting brains well and don’t have to get up early.

Grandjean uses the stringed instruments and Sponar the percussive instruments, and both collaborate on the electronic and computer parts of the music. Together they blow up small elements to the size of a full orchestra. A lonely saxophone will come in on “Amplitude” together with the same deserted surf-guitar that Tortoise introduced later on. There will be some noise, digital and otherwise, ambient keyboards, samples – but never a human voice; except for some heavily distorted parts in the beginning of the lengthy “Looping” and within some radioband-noise on “Radiomagnet”. But this latter track stands out from the rest due to its almost industrial leanings and the evolving wall of noise it contains that stretches into some epic landscape with a twanged guitar and rusty metal. Fortunately, Opak are not afraid of using big gestures and going long ways. “Looping” and “Landing”, the last two tracks on the record, are both over ten minutes, with the later one being a full blown electric guitar and drums feedback blowout. A daring finale for a record to easily filed as postrock meets electronica. This mix of paths, somehow starting from the same origin aka mindset, but leading towards heavily different directions, is also a main part of the attraction of “Two sleepwalkers …”, and one of the things that make you keep listening. Something that some of the postrock-bands from way back when weren’t able to anymore.

Basically, it is a good thing to see and hear more and more bands taking up what postrock has left over, checking what’s worth keeping and introducing new things to liven the genre up again. The main advantage of postrock was to take the starmanship out of the music and bring back the musicmanship. Ten years ago we wrote – there was no internetfanzine back then – that Tortoise was “taking it as far away from Cock Rock and Hair Metal as possible while still holding a guitar on stage”. Now, bands like Opak are taking it a little further.