BECOME THE OTHER

Here's an OZRICS album that sorta fell through the cracks. The reason for that was it was originally released only on their own Dovetail label and never had an American release on the IRS label (like "Arborescence", "Jurassic Shift" and "Strangeitude" did) because IRS was in deep financial trouble that caused it to go belly-up. Keyboardist Joie Hinton, who was with the band from the start had left, as well as Merv Pepler. They wanted to concentrate fully on EAT STATIC, a more straight-up techno outfit. Two new guys came in, one was Christopher Lenox-Smith, better known as Seaweed on keyboards, and Conrad Prince, better known as Rad on drums. These two new guys were in a band called DAMIDGE, which also featured ex-OZRIC bassist Roly (brother of guitarist Ed - unfortunately Roly died in 1999 from suicide). This lineup of Ed, Zia, John, Rad, and Seaweed would last until the beginning of 2001, making this one of their more stable lineups. This gave the band a bit of a more techno-leaning. Become the Other ended up as one of the more experimental albums, with some more ambient experiments, as well as techno. Rad used more electronic drums than Merv before him.

To me, I don't think this CD quite lives up to the heights of "Arborescence" because there are a couple of pieces that seem meander too much, it's almost as if this was the sound of an album with new members not quite adjusted. But you can't beat that trippy artwork from Blim, and if you're a fan, this is still worth having.