oRSo

Ask Your Neighbor… (Contraphonic)

By Rebecca Shore
Published: October 14th, 2008 | 9:00am

It's like your first time messing around on GarageBand, screwing with controllers and gauges, clicking buttons at random. You grab a friend to come behold your genius, but they just sit there: brow furrowed, unwilling to recognize your brilliant achievement as such. If they listen they'll hear the method in the madness, you argue, in defense of your post-organic-lo-fi-revival-pop opus. Unfortunately, your sloppy attempt can't quite support that argument. oRSo, however, can.

10 years ago, Phil Spirito developed his unique method of composition, which he used to generate oRSo's first self-titled album. Spirito writes the "shell" of a song on one instrument, and then invites fellow musicians to flesh out the tracks with their contributions. A decade later, this method has sired a long catalog of albums and EPs, and now this: Ask Your Neighbor.

The equation is a three-year long effort from 15 musicians shaking out 12 unique tracks. The result is a collection of songs devoid of the transparent hooks, beats, or any other musical clues to guide you through a song. On "Warm Up," violins, guitars, and breathy wind instruments intertwine with tambourines. "Nice To See You" is a brief collaboration of guitar and piano notes backed by a distant-sounding percussion section. It's the music that might result if you danced briskly across a floor in which each tile produced an abstract instrumental sound. Spirito sings over many of the tracks, his untrained voice adding a degree of grit to the otherwise ambient compositions. He points to Captain Beefheart as a major influence. While oRSo's stuff rocks a little less, and is decidedly more folksy (with the exception of "Way Way" which gives way to a frenetic vocal orgy mid-song), the experimental noise rock element is there. It's proof that when done with experience, talent, artistry, and disharmony can beget harmony.

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