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Australia’s Dada Stream are an absolute gem of a label. They sent me one of the final copies of the Scozbor album last year, after which psyreviews’ inbox was inundated with emails asking where to get it (and the occasional one still drops in, from frantic google-savvy record collectors, probably with beards.) They return with this delight. 

Odd Harmonic is a strange man, except there’s two of them so we should say: Odd Harmonic is a strange men. 

The first thing you notice about this album is that the digipack smells really nice: sort of chemical, photographic, sanitary. Comforting, in an antiseptic sort of way. The second thing you notice is that the CD itself doesn’t have any writing on it to identify what it is, which means that the lone mystery CD in your case logic for the past month can be deduced, following a convoluted process of mix-and-match elimination that Nintendo would turn into a game, as the Odd Harmonic CD you’re supposed to review. And the third thing you notice is that the back cover has a photo of what looks like a load of fags butted out on an old lasagne, but is, I fear, something several times less pleasant still. Do not be fooled into thinking, from the title, that this music is ambient. It isn’t. Well, it is in the literal sense (that music comes out of speakers and fills the immediate ambient space therearound).

If Shpongle is Harry Potter, Odd Harmonic is cancer. The Lucky Cuntry establishes sense of place (Australia) perfectly, with samples and randomness all over the place. Hoochie Momma is a multiphrenic acidbath with sounds that’ll bowl you over several times. Keep The Hate sounds like itunes is spazzing up (if, like me, you have problems with itunes 7, which is a piece of shit probably developed by inhouse coders at BNE and not apple. “Just works” my arse.) Black Acid Massacre is half a dozen industrial records playing at once, Monologue of Darkness is a dark monologue, and Confidence Install Pack is a dazzlingly intricate, mesmerising bit of music.

Most of It Will Be Alright is lying, an alienating piece of nastiness that grates on every conceivable aspect of your brain, until this quirky pokemon-friendly melody comes up and – well, makes everything alright. And finally, Trance Descendance closes the album off in a Homeric sort of way, a very labyrinthine little track (if eight minutes can be called little, which I say it can) that would alienate many a useless hippie. 

A brilliant album that should be required for anyone, particularly those making shit music that criminally bastardises the term “psychedelic”.

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