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Cassette
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PLZ 027CS
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World Greetings is a tongue-in-cheek welcome handshake to the world of commercial music from Otto, while also being a maximalist, unpredictable electronic journey. He's prepping a full album, also due on PLZ, that will contain more "delicate" pop songs, but wanted listeners to meet his most surrealist side first. "It's maybe like the bread basket before the meal," he explains, "but the bread is a deep-fried cheese ball with a fully ignited cheese sauce. Not necessarily a meal, but something to jolt the customer." The EP opens with the immersive, triumphant track "Greeting", before fizzling into life with the off-the-wall production of "Bathroom On The Bus": a high-octane club production that balances light flashes of synth melody with a rubbery bassline. Then there's "About You Now", a melancholic interpretation of the song first recorded by UK girl group the Sugababes, and made famous in the US by kids' TV star, Miranda Cosgrove. In Otto's version, the melody echoes out as if recorded in a deep cavern, while chaotic drum patterns erupt all around it, giving the impression that time is slowing down and speeding up at once. The EP reaches its frenetic peak with "Hiding From the Cops in My Range Rover", a skittering, paranoid track that was inspired by an infamous paparazzi shot of Paris Hilton. "I made 'Hiding From the Cops' very quickly in a common area in a dorm one Friday evening," says Otto. "I made it during a period where I was making mostly drum-focused tracks that I could program solenoids [electromagnets] to play. Also during this time, I would usually try and push the tempo as high as possible, making things uncomfortable but not 'too' uncomfortable."
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LP
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PLZ 030LP
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Those voices become even more prominent on Otto's upcoming full-length album, Clam Day, which leans more into his songwriting capabilities. While sprawling, psychedelic tracks like the seven-minute composition "Microplastics In My Bloodstream" and the taut, elastic opener "Sprained My Ankle In Gristedes Juice Aisle" continue to showcase Otto's flair for strange electronic textures, he also provides what feels like a parallel universe pop song with the dreamy "Guess My Crush". Starting life as a song he wrote on the guitar, "Guess My Crush" is "just four sine waves slightly detuned," explains Otto, "which I find really fascinating. It's one of the most low-level simple sounds one could synthesize -- but it gave me this incredibly peaceful feeling and I knew that I had finally found a song or sound that I could use to channel a lot of very specific feelings into." Otto's music may sound playful, but it also reveals his preoccupation with the idea of material (especially electronic) waste, and so a vague sense of decay and dread clings to the fringes of his songs. Imagine the face of a cartoon character staring at you from beneath the translucent sheen of a trash bag -- that's the funny-yet-grim space that Otto's music occupies. "I find it funny and also very troubling that 15-20 years after all of this kids' media, there are still bits and pieces of these obsolete franchises drifting around in the form of cheap plastic shit, now in landfills and contributing to lakes of toxic leachate," he reflects. "It's something I feel pretty stressed out about." That very real anxiety gives Otto's songs a sinister edge: those corporate sprites can often sound like they're taunting you, and soothing tones can shift to something more somber in barely a beat. That discomfort is part of the joy of Otto's strange, bristling music. His songs never make clear exactly how you're meant to feel -- what would be the fun in that?
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