Home > CD Reviews

Late of cLOUDDEAD and Anticon, Odd Nosdam’s Burner is a world-weary accumulation of sonic detritus. Melodies are congested with infected phlegm as if they’ve spent too long working in toxic sweatshops, too long on the kerbside of freeways staring at the passing cars, just too damn long. Voices are heard through torn screendoors, from old televisions through paper-thin walls and from exhausted conversations on the street. Burner isn’t the American Dream of the open road, it’s the soundtrack of feeder routes where the crashed and burned end up. Untitled Two is an eight minute miasma riven with coagulated crowdnoise and sanctified by the blowsy, psychedelic benediction of a two-bit organ. No hope of escape though, gave that up long ago. On 11th Ave Freakout car alarms sound and desperate voices shout furiously and unintelligibly: it’s the whole, sad spectrum of urban life, unsweetened by the ultimately bitter pill of airbrushed advertising. It’s dirty and messy, unrepentant and way realer than a boatload of MTV bling. Burner rounds out with another eight minute dose, Flying Saucer Attack, a long stream of mourning, roaring, noisome feedback and it’s the nearest to catharsis Nosdam gets in the whole fifty minutes.

Colin Buttimer

June 2005

Published by Grooves magazine