If one were inclined to travel from Boston to Philadelphia-- and every so often one should be- the most economical way is through New York's Chinatown. There are two buses: one from Boston to New York, the other from New York to Philadelphia. On a good day, the layover between shuttle buses only takes about an hour, just about the length of Ova Looven's debut album. Those familiar with the artsy-fartsy album titles of dream-pop past might recall Antarctica's 1997 EP 23:03 or perhaps the band's equally numerical LP from 1999, 81:03-- New York's Ova Looven is Antarctica members Chris Donohue, Glenn Maryanksy, and live-show soundman Steve Depalo. National Skyline's James Minor provides guitar lines for these self-proclaimed \x93electronic-shoegaze alchemists.\x94 And now together, like a comically ersatz Voltron sidelined by its underdeveloped ego, these men have combined their forces to craft 58:34, the slickly produced, affected and emotionally retarded soundtrack for my recent Chinatown layover. Here are some memories:
Minute 7:01Various trinket vendors monopolize precious sidewalk space on Canal Street, selling everything from umbrella hats to flipping elephants to remote control umbrella hats. At one stand is a young boy playing with what appears to be a gold-plated Buddha statue-- it shoots a flame out of its virile member. Intrigued, I pick up another from the table and try to evoke the same flame, but alas, my Buddha is broken and impotent. So, too, are Ova Looven: \x93Invisible Triangle\x94, the song of the minute, is laced with more seemingly emotional lyrics and 80s synth lines than a full season of Miami Vice sound clips. All lines are happening at once, all the time, with nary any build up or collapse in complexity. The effect, as can be expected, is incredibly overwhelming-- kind of like seeing something shoot fire out its plastic crotch. But upon closer inspection, the cheap gold paint gild of synth can no longer hide the boring song structure, and within about a half-minute, the song is out of gas. Like our friend Buddha, the song has blown its load prematurely.
Minute 17:37Chinatown's side streets are home to thousands of video bootleggers; as I made a turn onto one, Ova Looven took a coincidental detour. A respite from the album's otherwise baroque synth overkill, \x93All Gates Opex94 (invoking Can in name, not melody) is in a sense the only song on 58:34 where song writing seems to have come before electronic embellishment. Perhaps because of my surroundings at the time, but the song seemed reminiscent of background music played behind any number of late 80s Tom Cruise love scenes, most especially the one in racecar movie Days of Thunder, a film I bought that very day. Keep in mind that this is the highest compliment I can pay this album.
Minute 58:00As I walk by Popeye's Chicken, a truly incongruous fit in a town of dumplings and hunan steak, the vaguely feminine robot voice from the first track starts talking-- in German. Sweet. We are reminded about \x93das Gedaechtnis,\x94 \x93die Höhle,\x94 and \x93der Cape,\x94 all meaningless hodge-podge which any mediocre German student can tell you is shitty electronica's equivalent to, say, prog rock's fruitless musings on dungeons, dragons, labyrinths, and epic adventures. The rest of the 58:34's lyrics were in English, of course, making this the most pointless use of a German robot voice ever.
It's also an unfortunate paradigm for the composition of this album: Ova Looven's musical decisions seem to defer almost entirely to superficial gimmicks akin to any mediocre \x93sophisti-pop\x94 synth band from twenty years ago. Aside from the incredibly slick production which allowed for a clownish number of loops to run at all times, there is nothing that differentiates Ova Looven from its New Order-aping predecessors, who similarly tried to distance themselves from their source by stuffing their songs with synth. Even New Order itself tried to build upon its own foundation with Republic and Get Ready-- not by embracing more electronics, but by concentrating on the song structure itself. Maybe Ova Looven, in a fit of über-irony, is parodying itself, and this is all part of some elaborate Andy Kaufmann-style joke. Whatever their intentions, I know this: it would be a goddamn ironic masterpiece if I ate at Popeye's, the only non-Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Some things are just plain wrong, though.
Minute 58:34As the album fades out, I pass through an alleyway going towards East Broadway. On the roof of one building, there are about twenty or so people drinking brews and watching a movie being projected onto a whitewashed wall of the building directly across from it. What a brilliant thing to do; whoever came up with that idea for a party must be the coolest, best-dressed hipster on the planet. He was on Friendster seven years ago, knew about the Strokes before Fab Moretti was even born, and bought his first camouflage mesh hat way before you did. What a guy. The second thing I thought was this: not even he could possibly garner enough ironic energy to enjoy this perfectly unoriginal effort.
