Orthrelm have got to be one of the more grating bands in recent history. A guitar-drums duo from Washington, DC, prior to OV they played tiny compositions full of lightning-fast, uber-complex riffs with no repetition whatsoever. The result was dizzying, tantalizing, sometimes mindblowing, and always an exercise in endurance. The 99-track, 13-minute EP Asristir Veildrioxe, and especially the four tracks Orthrelm contributed to a split CD with NYC Ruins-lite duo Touchdown, are nothing if not difficult to listen to for their sheer speed and unmitigated intensity.
On OV, the duo's first release for Mike Patton's Ipecac label, the endurance factor is multiplied tenfold as Orthrelm make repetition the name of the game. While some of the split CD material hinted at what's here, nothing can prepare the listener for the all-out minimalistic assault that is OV. Over the course of its single 45-minute track, tiny riffs are repeated over and over for minutes at a time, everything moving at hyperspeed, with no rest and no break from the intensity. The first major change in theme doesn't happen until eighteen minutes into the composition, and that change is actually a ramping up of intensity rather than a break in it! Not until twenty-two minutes in do things slow down, but only for a minute or two before picking up again. In the second half, themes change with more frequency, building inexorably to what one might expect to be a spectacular conclusion, but which instead is just an abrupt stop. In the end, though, this inconclusiveness is compelling — consistent with the circular, repetitive aesthetic of the piece.
So, imagine Steve Reich or Philip Glass deciding that screaming electric guitars and rapid-fire drums were the weapon of choice for their compositions, and that's a starting point. Then quadruple the speed at which the notes are flurrying, and you've got a better idea of what's really going on. I'm told that Orthrelm has performed this piece live for a couple years now, but I can hardly imagine how this music is playable by humans: it is inhumanly fast, inhumanly precise, and the two musicians are inhumanly tight. Not to mention the fact that the damn thing is about 10 hours' worth of notes compressed into 45 minutes.
It's established, then, that as a work of art, OV is fascinating, unique, maybe even groundbreaking in some ways. But what is it like to listen to? I'm reminded of Erik Satie's solo piano piece "Vexations," in which a single theme is repeated, sans any form of development, 840 times over the course of anywhere from 14 to 28 hours. I actually heard a 14-hour performance of this (by a small army of rotating pianists) a few years ago, and the effect was one of hypnosis; and after a while, it became background noise. Most remarkably, when the performance ended, after the final note was struck, the quiet was shocking: one could hear the electric wall clock humming on the opposite side of the concert hall. OV is kind of like that — the endless repetition ensnares itself into your brain, with each tiny change in theme or tempo magnified tenfold; and the ending is spectacular in its abruptness and resulting psychological effect.
But is it fun? Well, I actually enjoy it, and I've spun it many times, much to my own surprise — I figured this would be a novelty, best heard once and never again, only for intellectual appreciation. But it's kind of addictive, really, and no — I'm not the self-mutilating type. Certainly I would recommend OV to a tiny, tiny percentage of the music listeners I know, but for those and those alone, this is one hell of a ride.
