Live Review Manchester Music (manchestermusic.co.uk)
16 September 2004 / Night & Day / Manchester By Tom Kirk

Any attempt to immortalise Oskar's sound in flowing prose, meanwhile, bar perhaps some genius Joycean reinvention, is destined to result in an all-round language system failure. Originally formed to create soundtracks for performance art and catwalk shows, the live version is a fluid body centred around key members Nick Powell (ex-Strangelove, glamgloom fans) and Jonny Dawe (ex-Collapsed Lung, Eatmygoalfans). Which, when one considers they're also signed to Astrid's own Incarnation label (she, lest we forget, herself ex Goya Dress), threatens to turn this into some sort of graveyard reunion for 90s indie also-rans.

As it turns out, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Early indications, principally in set opener 'PSI', suggest this might fit vaguely into the same camp as A Silver Mount Zion and other such Godspeed spin-off bedtime stories, mixing the simmering, white-hot reverberations of a fallout's aftermath with charred violins and cellos, then interspersing both with explosive bursts of runaway noise. By the time Astrid turns up for the unearthly, tarnished sprawl of 'Bang The Drum', though, we've long since gone stark raving everywhere. There are parts of this you could imagine soundtracking surrealist car adverts; sonic bioengineering in which found-sound electrode implants are grafted on to organic, live instrumentation, which leaves it not a million miles away from Jonny Greenwood's recent 'Bodysong', although rather less up its own avant-garde arse.

The beautiful 'Peripherique', on the other hand (not hearing which should probably be made a capital offence now), fades in and out like a sad dream, with sounds seeming to trade with one another on almost-interconnecting silken strands. Elsewhere, we're sent plunging from cluttered chatter and bustle the one minute into quiet, life-support machine hums the next- and there's even a touch of George-like fooling around with nauseous pressures, which can only be a good thing. It's weblike without ever quite meeting together, cohesive while barely coherent, and constantly far too melodious to be even remotely described as cut-and-paste. Live, Oskar are not just edge-of-your seat riveting; they're also that rarest of commodities - not quite like anything you've heard before. The current mini-album, 'Air Conditioning', could just prove unmissable too.