Ten Years Of ATP: Om

I wasn’t familiar with Om before their recent line-up shift, so drummer Emil Amos is the only Om drummer I know. He’s another good one to watch, exhibiting a sort of restrained and languid flailing that somehow becomes impeccably precise somewhere along the way. It works with Cisneros’ bass playing, but I can imagine that other styles did too.

I fell in and out of their music, at times mesmerised and at others a little alienated. Now and then the biblical seriousness reminded me of being in church as a child: despite the fact that I resonate with the whole Old World might have the last laugh thing, I’m still wondering what the sky looks like outside… After the show I told someone that listening to Om was like staring into a volcano for a little too long. Perhaps I should have said active but not currently erupting, apocalyptic but not apocalypse. Perhaps it’s some tantric trip.

Which leads me to ‘Cremation Ghat’, the song that got me back involved with the band towards the end of their set after a long and repetitive one slowly became reduced to it’s elements after an exciting first few minutes. This is the one I liked most on their recent record. Cisneros dances over the fretboard using the bass in a way which harnesses both its driving and melodic capacities in a new way, new to me at least. He even seems to use even the relatively troublesome notes (that make compressors so popular) to positive effect. As an amateur bass player I’ve noticed a few places on the fretboard where a note will boom out of all proportion. I don’t think I’m far wrong to suggest he made use of this inherent flaw. Perhaps that’s some harmonic tantric trip.

Having been repeatedly told that Om were a duo I was pleased to see a Tambourine Saddhu on the stage right, at one point he was rattling that bastard like someone mourning at the wailing wall. Y’know, wringing their hands and nodding up and down and feeling something powerful, but he had a tambourine in his hands. He could also sing a piercing wail like no other, haunting and devotional, a shade of the Sun City Girls in there.

He looked like a dude who releases things on the Holy Mountain label, but I could be wrong. At times he picked up a guitar and made like he was going to do something. Not sure if there were sound problems, but it didn’t really fit, seemed like something wasn’t making a noise when the band expected it to. So Om have a hell of a wailing tambourine player. They should keep him on I reckon, there’s fertile soil there and I bet that Cisneros likes parables. Oh and there were many times where I was nodding and pacing around and being quite involved, just in case it sounds like I got too het up about the John the Baptist stuff.

Om ATP Photos: