It may be tempting to call Nonagonic Now world music for indie rockers, but it's much weirder than that description might imply. This isn't a band bringing its indigenous musical tradition to a wider audience, it's a bunch of freaks from New Zealand putting several different styles into a blender, pouring the resulting mix into a nine-sided mold, and then dancing gleefully on the mold until it shatters. Over the course of the album, Orchestra of Spheres move through a myriad of sounds, including Balinese gamelan, African ...
Read More
It may be tempting to call Nonagonic Now world music for indie rockers, but it's much weirder than that description might imply. This isn't a band bringing its indigenous musical tradition to a wider audience, it's a bunch of freaks from New Zealand putting several different styles into a blender, pouring the resulting mix into a nine-sided mold, and then dancing gleefully on the mold until it shatters. Over the course of the album, Orchestra of Spheres move through a myriad of sounds, including Balinese gamelan, African folk flavors, wah-wah-laden psychedelic freakouts, off-kilter art funk, dance music, and general electro-acoustic oddness. If all of this genre-hopping were done in a more arid, academic manner, it would probably be about as much fun as watching paint dry. But Orchestra of Spheres are the furthest thing from a bunch of intellectual experimenters. From the sound of it, they're a wild-eyed band of musical gypsies, hell-bent on using whatever tools they might have on hand to build a big, blowout dance party where losing yourself in an ecstatic frenzy is the ultimate goal. Toward that end, they employ a number of intriguing-sounding homemade instruments -- where else are you likely to encounter a "sexomouse marimba," for example, or a "biscuit tin guitar?" Nonagonic Now is full of joyful sounds that might not always be easy to identify, but make it consistently impossible to remain seated. ~ J. Allen, Rovi
Read Less