The Octopus Project - Hello, Avalanche (11th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) (2018)

Welcome to 2018 everyone the year that will finally bring flying cars, robot butlers and a telepathy-based internet. It s been 11 years since the release of The Octopus Project's third album and perennial fan-favorite Hello Avalanche. As such, it felt appropriate to re-release the record in a deluxe incarnation newly remastered, visually redesigned, and pressed on two 180-gram LPs in a gatefold sleeve. That second LP contains 2009's Golden Beds EP (9th anniversary alert!) and a full side of never-before-heard demos from that era, giving fans a look into an expanded Avalanche universe for the first time. This album represented a bold step forward musically and artistically for the band. With ragged, furious distorted guitars at one end of the spectrum and the pure, luminescent tones of the Theremin at the other, it mines a staggering variety of sound (via strings, synthesizers, drums, glockenspiel, trombones, etc.), filling the songs with brilliant contrasting colors and cascading waves of sonic bliss. While the band's previous records were mainly self-produced, for this outing they wanted to achieve the perfect blend between highend studio trickery and lo-fi home experimentation. It was recorded and co-produced by Ryan Hadlock (Blonde Redhead, The Gossip) at rural Bear Creek Studio outside Seattle in February, 2007, and mixed in various sessions by the band, Hadlock and Erik Wofford (Voxtrot, Explosions In The Sky). As the band continues to forge ahead into the telepathic-flyingrobot future, exploring new sound worlds with every album, take a look back to this major turning point in their ever-expanding body of work.