reviews / 2008

RAZ OHARA - Raz Ohara And The Odd Orchestra

Name: RAZ OHARA – Raz Ohara And The Odd Orchestra
Item: Raz Ohara And The Odd Orchestra
Rating: 6.5
Author: Ciro Frattini

2008 (Get physical)

songwriter

by Ciro Frattini

6.5

A character with a double life, this Raz Ohara. By day a refined singer-songwriter with guitar and voice (his debut, "The Last Legend", dates back to 2001); by night an established vocalist on the Berlin electronic scene (his collaboration with Apparat is recent). The fruit of these two souls is called "Raz Ohara And The Odd Orchestra", a cluster of songs balanced between intimacy and darkness.

Acoustic guitar, orchestral accents, intrusions of electronics: these are the elements the Dane blends together; yet the results are wide-ranging. Between a swaying folk litany ("Happy Song"), a sunny, delightful soul tableau ("One"), a distorted Buckley-esque inspiration ("Set on You"), moments of a wholly different origin sneak in. The suffocating "Counting Days" and the single "Kisses" use keyboards in a disturbing way, thickening the atmosphere; while more rarefied themes shape "Where He At", which recalls Mùm, and the intense instrumental "Love for Mrs. Rhodes".

What most of the tracks share is an imprinting built on a sincere sense of anguish, not even all that latent, which pervades Ohara's compositions.

The songwriting is of high quality, and so is the sonic dressing: what doesn't help is rather the excessive weight of introversion that burdens the structure, lacking an adequate number of release valves (the emblematic "The Case"). Still, a good work, one that will surely find the admirers it deserves.

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15/01/2008

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Ciro Frattini, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition