In the modern sense of the term, "lo-fi" really springs from the garage and punk sounds. They were styles of music that expounded upon their raw sensibilities; it was okay to put out a record that sounded like it was recorded with a small tape deck in the middle of your parents’ garage, because that's all you had available. Then, somewhere along the way, lo-fi became a purposeful aesthetic decision with music like Folk Implosion or Beck’s Odelay. The kitsch and side-effect sound of one movement was transformed into the artistic core of another. It seemed orderly in my mind: the differences and why I liked or didn’t like them made sense. And then I heard Oldman’s Two Heads Bis Bis.

This album, its purpose, and its intent are perplexing from the get-go. On “Broken Teeth," there is a truly haunting yet engaging backdrop of ambient noises, looped vocal samples and dying seagull screeches. Disappointingly though, the actual drums, guitar, and bass that overshadow these ambionics (ambient + sonics) are drowning in horrible lo-fi recording quality. I mean, normally I think it’s a bad thing to clearly hear the rattle of the snare in response to every bass guitar note plucked. What is perplexing is that I can’t tell if this is purposeful, incidental, or the product of neglect. The latter is a hard pill to swallow, because most musicians I know can’t stand to put out a record that sounds like that, which pretty much makes incidental a distant possibility as well. For this lo-fi sound to be purposeful, though, I have to be able to vindicate the premise with good musicianship, which  is a difficult task, as well. On the subsequent track, the drummer sounds like he is in need of a click track to keep in time. As someone who can’t seem to play a trap kit in even a rudimentary style, the song gives the impression of a terribly uncomfortable drummer at the skins.

Again, I am forced to seriously question my critical conclusions, because I can’t tell if this is all done purposefully or not. There really isn’t clear evidence one way or the other and its presentation in the music is so front and center that one could interpret paradoxical arrivals simultaneously. Throughout the entire album, the drummer stumbles drunkenly into walls, leads the bass astray and leaves the guitar behind altogether. A perfect example of this is “Sunny Afternoon African Charge”. For eight minutes and fourteen seconds, the listener struggles to follow a central theme to the auditory hallucination. Maybe this is to illustrate how insane everyday existence is; or maybe it’s just the inability to be your own best editor and know when to leave some ideas behind.

The self-questioning effect this album has is surely its greatest strength, because it compellingly keeps the listener off-balance. Often we look to music to be soothing, beautiful (in a mainstream paradigm), and approachable, but it is often what makes us uncomfortable that can brightly contrast to the invigorating.

In the end, the jazz aesthetic apparent in the first song made me think I was listening to the punk rock influenced version of Nostalgia 77 or Jon Kennedy. Unfortunately, reactions like that were few and far between with this album, and I wouldn’t recommend it for listening further than a dabble.

-Gabriel Bogart