[back to events page]	Roots of Orchis & Oma Yang Sunday, October 20th 2002 $5 cover 9pm door This is the Roots of Orchis third US tour and it's in support of their latest album Some Things Plural which reached #129 on the CMJ charts earlier in the year. The Roots of Orchis have shared a stage with the likes of Modest Mouse, Blackheart Procession, Pinback, Liars, the Rapture, and Tristeza among others. They are an instrumental group in the vein of early Tortoise with leanings towards electronic/IDM in the vein of DJ Shadow. Oma Yang will be the supporting act on this tour, in anticipation of their newest album, Bang Bang which will be released in October. They are an aggressive instrumental group in the vein of Oxes, Mogwai, and Don Caballero. They have recently toured the West Coast with Explosions in the Sky, Six Parts Seven, and Volta Do Mar. The Roots of Orchis This dynamic four-piece evokes ethereal hymns of barren glacial vistas and elite social collectives. Marching through a quagmire of somnambulant specters, The Roots brave common market consumers, common law scenesters, and common chord progressions, intent on bringing us uniquely identifiable works; to the average listener, this effort may adjust their receptors and fine-tune one's awareness, thusly causing greater alertness or sensory overload. Smooth guitars sweep across deft oceanic drifts, undercurrents of backwashed samples float by in uncorrupted streams, mellifluous low end E string rumbles coast along the shorelines serenely beckoned towards the tide, and you find yourself awakening from dreams you've never had. Nice. (The Big Takeover) Oma Yang Thanks to Tortoise, a mini-glut of post-rock instrumental acts has arisen. And as with any exploding genre, it can be difficult for a band to distinguish itself. Thus, on From The Heart Of Jumbo Malaria, Oma Yang chooses to focus on the "rock" in "post-rock." In fact, it gets downright psychotic. So while the lush, rambling songs have eyebrow-raising titles like "Spiders Making Love Like Bears" and "There Is No General Chow In Team," they're also musical encapsulations of lunacy. The slow, careful guitar progressions and gorgeous, rippling percussion often deteriorate into noisy, breakneck-speed spurts of improvisational-flavored jazz. The best display of this madness comes at the three-and-a-half minute mark of the otherwise gentle "Corn On One Side," when a Boredoms-style outburst erupts for a minute before the tune settles into another half minute of quiet gurgling sounds. With such wild, unexpected disturbances throughout Jumbo Malaria, the only response is to smile insanely along with Oma Yang. (CMJ)