No guitars! For his 28th album at the helm of the Osees, John Dwyer and a crew of art punk instigators switch to synths, samplers, drum machines and two saxophones. That’s a radical change, but it makes surprisingly little difference. If you know the Osees at all, you’ll recognize the sound immediately.
Category: John Dwyer
The Aquarium Drunkard Interview :: OSEES’ John Dwyer
For his most recent OSEES album, A Foul Form, John Dwyer shifts again, this time revisiting the punk and hardcore that shaped his Rhode Island adolescence. And since he’s looking back, it seemed like a good time for us to look back, too, in an interview that spans the Dwyer career so far, from Providence skate punk to SF garage rock to Castle Face honcho to free improv experimenter.
Witch Egg :: Greener Pools
Busy man John Dwyer doesn’t slow down. In addition to Thee Oh Sees, Dwyer erects cracked, synth-heavy jams under his Damaged Bug moniker, mans the Castle Face label, and has been increasingly delving into jazz, free and otherwise, via multiple ad-hoc collaborations. Where last year saw the release of Bent Arcana, a half dozen tracks scanning krautrock, minimalist jazz, prog and fusion, 2021 introduced Witch Egg–Dwyer’s latest improvisational outfit rounded out by Nick Murray, Brad Caulkins, Tom Dolas, and Greg Coates. The skronk is alive!
Bent Arcana: The First Transmission
Recorded at tail end of last year, at a half dozen tracks, Bent Arcana scans krautrock, minimalist jazz, prog and fusion. Positioned as “the first interstellar transmission from five days of electrified & improvised sessions recorded at Stu-Stu-Studio,” the album is the inceptive chapter in a series of ad-hoc sessions to come. Stream the album in its entirety, at AD.