OGOGO – Redux CD

III Records

“Free jazz” and “avant garde” are the two best words I can come up with to describe OGOGO’s Redux. The sound throughout this entire album is very progressive and guitar/trombone based, and while it can be noisy at times, it’s hard to call this a “noise” album in the traditional sense, though I doubt that’s what OGOGO was going for. With rambling tones and endless prog-rock guitar noodling, Redux comes across as fairly sophisticated but also rather pretentious.

I can detect some fairly complex work being done here, but there’s not a lot of variety to speak of. There’s a lot of improvisation going on with the guitar, to the point where I can’t really discern if OGOGO is going for sheer intricacy or complete, unadulterated improvisation. The avant garde aspect of this album stems mostly from the seemingly random notes played with a sound coming straight out of the 90s combined with an elusive dark ambient vibe. Broken up into serenades in the middle, OGOGO Serenade – Movement V does something to break up the sound a bit with a minor epic buildup near the beginning, but for the most part, Redux becomes muddled in its own idea and doesn’t really do much to go anywhere interesting.

Overall, I found this album to be far too long and pretty redundant. OGOGO just doesn’t keep the music varied enough to justify an hour long album. The avant garde weirdness just didn’t last long enough to make the album as a whole interesting and, in fact, made Redux a pretty boring listen. I can only take so much tedious trombone.

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