Review: Odyssey One by The Owl

It's always an exciting prospect to discover a completely new artist (to you at least) that also has a huge wealth of material in a back catalogue primed and ready for exploration. I had this experience last year when I interviewed miserable.noise.club, and have had similar experiences with the likes of Tim Hecker and Merzbow in the past. I am now having this experience again with The Owl, the solo project of Leeds, UK based instrumentalist Paul Priest.

Paul has also been a member of Gets Worse and Hundred Year Old Man among a slew of other bands who fall on the heavy/extreme/post/experimental spectrum. Under The Owl moniker there are a whopping 33 releases so far on bandcamp, and Odyssey One will soon become number 34. The music across this discography can both solely focus on and wildly combine elements of drone, doom, noise, glitch, ambient, industrial and field recordings. There's no one specific sound or genre to expect from The Owl's music, but from what I have listened to so far it all sits on the fringes of experimental heaviness.

Odyssey One might only be 23 minutes long and consist of two tracks, but there is a hypnotic narrative to this record that feels completely entrancing and defies the relatively short run time. Sonically, the opening track Ascend (And Keep Going) is driven by an engulfing bass guitar sound in the vein of Bell Witch, Farer or even Om, but the layers of psychedelic noise, industrial drums and haunting synths give this track remarkable amounts of texture. The riff may be repetitive but this is by design, and amongst the walls of sonic disquiet the subtle changes in melody are given even more emphasis.

At no point do things reach a point of ennui, there is an energy that thrives throughout the track, manifesting itself like a hike through a tremendous mountain range such as the Slovakian Tatras depicted on the album's cover. Even at the point of exhaustion you can still, with just the power of the mind, keep pushing one foot in front of the other terminally. The track feels like it could go on forever into temporal oblivion, but will always be moving forward even if it's basic motions are forever the same.

The second track Descend (Then Rise Again) has an ambient drone atmosphere and is more freeform in nature. The track begins noisily enough and is paired with a stretched, distorted vocal sample in it's opening moments. Soon though a wave of cacophonous drone flows over and as it passes it leaves a vapour of crackling bass. Sprinkles of glistening synths shine through as the tones become heavier and more oppressive, and at it's final moments things fade slowly into an ethereal silence. Part of me wishes this track had been a bit longer and explored more of the depth of these tones, but in context Descend acts as a beautiful counterpoint to the trudging gloom of Ascend.

Odyssey One is a quality piece of music, but it's quality feels incredibly natural. It's clear that a lot of work has gone into this album, but this isn't a record that feels sieved through some mental focus group. It feels like an organic piece of expressionism in two forms, one dark and exhausting, the other cathartic and relaxing. Both of them though are entrancing and hypnotic, and together make for a wonderful record of genre defying heaviness.

Odyssey One is released on January 29th and you can view a video preview of it here. For more music by The Owl check out their bandcamp page here.