Olivier Lamm, aka Odot, aka O.Lamm, has too many ideas and too many names. The 27-year-old glitch-pop experimentalist shares his European record label and broad-minded view of pop with Shugo Tokumaru, but the Frenchman's recordings are more frenetic and electronic-based than those of his Japanese peer (who has only mellowed since 2004 breakthrough Night Piece). On third proper full-length Monolith, released in the U.S. by Portland's Audio Dregs, O.Lamm overextends himself even further-- but more like a slinky than a bungee cord, so hooray no bloodshed.
It'd probably only be video game bloodshed, anyway. Monolith Mario-Paints laptop breakbeats, J-pop bleeps, and, somewhere, a Gameboy version of a Melvins riff into a delightfully seizure-inducing fantasy. The princess is in this castle, starting with Lullatone's Yoshimi Tomida on kaleidoscopic do-re-mi opener "La Chasse Aux Oiseaux". The real prize, however, is "Open Malice", featuring Paris trio Konki Duet's Zoe Wolf sounding beguilingly listless on a bass-heavy track that's brainy/zany enough for a dream collab between Cornelius and the Blow. "Genius Boy" casts another Konki Duet-er, Kumi Okamoto, in a Hypercolor aural cartoon. Oh, and Momus raps-- spitting words like "malarkey" darkly on ominous cut-and-paste "Syllabus of Errors".
O.Lamm mixes in some organic sounds, too. Sampled strings and disembodied vocal snippets drive the electro-funk plot of "The Macguffin". The wife of the computer voice from "Fitter Happier" gives way to trebly acoustic guitar on "Silviphoebia", while music-box chimes and spaced-out synths help mask a melody that's awkardly like "Good King Wenceslas". Sometimes O.Lamm follows his whims too far, as on "Electric Emily", an allusion to a William Vollmann story with yipping samples and murky percussion that irritate more than they exhilarate.
Since O.Lamm's whole deal is pixie stick-fueled excess-- jerky beats moving onto the next idea without ever quite settling into an easy groove-- his occasional excess excesses are pretty easily forgiveable. But I still can't help drooling over what he'd sound like if forced to work within more conventionally song-oriented limits, as he does here on "Open Malice" or on first YouTube video "Aerialist", which strings together enough vocal snippets to nearly resemble conventional verses. Monolith ends with a succession of voices, each asking, "Julie, what's the matter?" Dudes, this time I have no idea.
