Tokyo-Chiba based musician otom* has been releasing music since 2004. He cites The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, Flying Saucer Attack, Slowdive, Galaxie 500, Cocteau Twins and especially My Bloody Valentine, as youthful sources of inspiration – as well as the noise and melody of folks such as Fennesz. Taping into the techniques of Third Eye Foundation, Oval and William Basinski. His latest long-player, “Fortunia”, collects 12 tracks from his archive, reworked and re-recorded. The standouts for me are themore overtly MBV influenced pieces. 

The opening “Without You”, for example, is a wall of electric strumming set to a marching rhythm. Rattling, rolling and epic. Its cymbals crashing, guitars screaming, its harmonies, consisting of multiple, layered, whispers, evoking a heavenly shoegaze-y lullaby. The beauty hidden in its cathartic cacophony, the direct descendent of all those 80s and 90s Creation Records acts who fed 60s bubblegum and psychedelia through 70s punk rock. Similarly, the penultimate “24” is a brilliant bit of barmy Whammy Bar bending, a la Kevin Shields. A wonky, reckless, hopelessly romantic rush of squealing strings. See-sawing like “Loveless”. Capturing youth’s anxieties. Its drums a delirious dervish of spinning, spiralling syncopation. 

otom is also a cinephile, and about to launch a movie review site named “Filmontype”. Wanderers”, which features some fine New Order-esque riffing, was originally constructed around samples from Věra Chytilová’s surreal Czech satire, “Sedmikrasky (Daisies)”. In addition, literary references abound. “So It Goes” lifts its title from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”, while the final number, “Grapes”, tips its hat to John Steinbeck. The latter’s choir-boy vocals attempting to counter a chaos conjured from mind-bending, relentless, hypnotic, repetition, built from a backwards Fender Jazzmaster and broken beats. The euphoric racket eventually falling and closing the album in a quiet, calm, ambient, keyboard coda.

*otom reached out after reading the BBTT review of Suzanne Kraft’s “About You”.

otom’s “Fortunia” can be ordered directly from Bandcamp.