After performing on stage together in 2012 at New York's Ecstatic Music Festival, fellow rock experimentalists Oneida and Rhys Chatham joined forces to create a collaborative LP that comes off even more eclectic and exploratory than one would expect.
Working off of the Brooklyn five-piece's dense use of repetition and the Paris-based musician's penchant for loose, freeform guitar expressionism, What's Your Sign? does a terrific job of mining what makes each entity so beloved within the experimental music scene. Though many would postulate that the world-class drumming of Oneida's Kid Millions would be the key to holding these six tracks together, it's actually the triple-guitar threat of Chatham, Hanoi Jane and Showtime that provide the Sonic Youth-esque "Well Tuned Guitar (Oneida Version)," post-rock builder "A. Philip Randlop at Back Bay Station" and the free-jazz closer "Civil Weather" with their senses of personality and adventurousness.
Fortunately, only the album opener, the grunge-tinged "You Get Brighter" (the only track to feature vocals) is their only real misstep, as the sleek and precise playing from these six musicians is traded in for ham-fisted bellicosity. On What's Your Sign?, Oneida and Rhys Chatham show that sometimes the most obvious collaborations are the ones that end up surprising you the most.
(Northern Spy)Working off of the Brooklyn five-piece's dense use of repetition and the Paris-based musician's penchant for loose, freeform guitar expressionism, What's Your Sign? does a terrific job of mining what makes each entity so beloved within the experimental music scene. Though many would postulate that the world-class drumming of Oneida's Kid Millions would be the key to holding these six tracks together, it's actually the triple-guitar threat of Chatham, Hanoi Jane and Showtime that provide the Sonic Youth-esque "Well Tuned Guitar (Oneida Version)," post-rock builder "A. Philip Randlop at Back Bay Station" and the free-jazz closer "Civil Weather" with their senses of personality and adventurousness.
Fortunately, only the album opener, the grunge-tinged "You Get Brighter" (the only track to feature vocals) is their only real misstep, as the sleek and precise playing from these six musicians is traded in for ham-fisted bellicosity. On What's Your Sign?, Oneida and Rhys Chatham show that sometimes the most obvious collaborations are the ones that end up surprising you the most.
