Octant's debut album
Shock-No-Par combines homespun visual and musical artistry with technological know-how. The group's idea of a "drum machine" is a homemade robot bolted to an otherwise normal drum kit; this willingness to reject conventional ideas about electronics, music, and electronic music defines
Octant's unpretentious yet inventive stance. Songs like "The Move" and "Simplexity" feature sweet but somewhat distant boy-girl vocals, understated guitars, and layered synths, and, of course, the group's mechanical, percussive namesake. The whimsical but slightly menacing style of the band is reinforced by the two video tracks on the CD, which feature robots with baby doll heads roaming around techno-scapes. The vinyl version of
Shock-No-Par includes two tracks not on the CD, "3/4 Nostalgia" and "Green Drop .2," a song that finds a typically
Octant use for a dot-matrix printer. ~ Heather Phares