Octopus Project

Octopus Project

Damsel

Robot High School

***Damsel is a western comedy period film co-written and co-directed by David Zellner and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter). Starring Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska, Damsel tells the story of Samuel Alabaster (Pattinson), an affluent pioneer, who ventures across the American frontier to marry the love of his life, Penelope (Wasikowska). He traverses the Wild West with a drunkard and a miniature horse named Butterscotch; however, their once-simple journey grows treacherous, and soon the lines between heroes, damsels and villains are blurred. The Western-infused score is composed by Austin-based outfit, THE OCTOPUS PROJECT (famous for its original mix of electronica and live music). The Octopus Project also scored the directors’ previous film, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter. The soundtrack also features "Honeybun," the romantic campfire ballad performed by Robert Pattinson.

Octopus Project

Hello, Avalanche 11th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

Peek-A-Boo

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 high-end 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-flying-robot future, exploring new sound worlds with every album, take a look back to this major turning point in...

Octopus Project

Memory Mirror

Robot High School

***Austin's favorite experimental pop band, THE OCTOPUS PROJECT releases their 6th studio album, Memory Mirror. The album was recorded by the band, mixed by DANNY REISCH (Shearwater, White Denim) & DAVE FRIDMANN (Tame Impala, Flaming Lips), and mastered by GREG CALBI (David Bowie, Talking Heads). The Octopus Project has been releasing joyous party music since 2002, following a musical path that veers through blown-out rock’n’roll, vivid electronic colors, surreal pop and expansive psych landscapes. As performers they’ve earned a reputation for elaborate multimedia experiments and extremely loud, extremely fun live shows - a practice they’ve pursued over a decade of worldwide touring that has included festival stages such as Coachella, Lollapalooza and All Tomorrow’s Parties, and tours as handpicked support for artists as diverse as Aesop Rock, DEVO, and Explosions in the Sky. Also active as composers for video games and film, they were awarded the Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival for their work on the film Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter. They are currently working on two film scores to be released in 2017—Damsel (directed by Zellner Bros. // starring Robert Pattinson), and Small Crimes (directed by Evan Katz // starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).

Octopus Project

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter Original Soundtrack

Robot High School

***Based in Austin, TX, THE OCTOPUS PROJECT's creative output so far includes five studio albums, innumerable remixes and collaborations, original scores for film, television and video games, and self-designed merchandise ranging from stereoscopic posters to handmade stuffed animals. The band maintains a full touring schedule, with venues ranging across the world and performances that might include a chorus of dancing ghosts, a high school marching band, or an 8-channel audience-surrounding audiovisual rig. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is the band’s latest scoring collaboration with filmmakers DAVID and NATHAN ZELLNER. The spare, haunting soundtrack took home the Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In conjunction with the film’s theatrical release. Pressed on limited edition 180-gram vinyl with letter-pressed jackets.

Octopus Project

Fever Forms

Peek-A-Boo

Austin’s favorite experimental pop band The Octopus Project returns with their fifth studio album, Fever Forms. While its immediate predecessor, 2010’s Hexadecagon, was celebrated for its epic scope, cosmic departure and conceptual nature, Fever Forms is more akin to the band’s best-selling Hello, Avalanche LP, with concentrated doses of frenetic beats and exuberant melody set in a brilliantly colored sound world. These twelve dense, ecstatic pop jams will astound and disorient.  The single Sharpteeth, a limited-edition 7-inch pressed on florescent pink vinyl, drops two weeks before the album. But proceed with caution: As tempting as it may be to keep “Sharpteeth” on repeat, the soaring guitorchestra and haunting Theremin lead has been known to reduce some listeners to puddles of tears around the 250th consecutive listen. The single also features two exclusive non-album B-sides. The Octopus Project has released joyous party music since 2002, all the while touring the world both on their own and as handpicked support for artists as diverse as Aesop Rock, DEVO, Explosions in the Sky and Trail of Dead. They’ve earned a reputation for crafting exceptional experiences through elaborate multimedia experiments, lavish album packaging, and the intensity of their extremely fun, extremely loud live shows. The band plans to hit the road again in July and August in support of Fever Forms. Tour dates coming soon!

Octopus Project

Sharpteeth

Peek-A-Boo

Austin’s favorite experimental pop band The Octopus Project is set to return with their fifth studio full-length, Fever Forms. The single Sharpteeth, a limited-edition 7-inch pressed on florescent pink vinyl, drops two weeks before the album’s. But proceed with caution: As tempting as it may be to keep “Sharpteeth” on repeat, the soaring guitorchestra and haunting Theremin lead has been known to reduce some listeners to puddles of tears about the 250th consecutive listen. The single also features two exclusive non-album B-sides. The Octopus Project has released joyous party music since 2002, all the while touring the world both on their own and as handpicked support for artists as diverse as Aesop Rock, DEVO, Explosions in the Sky and Trail of Dead. They’ve earned a reputation for exceptional experiences through elaborate multimedia experiments, lavish album packaging, and the intensity of their extremely fun, extremely loud live shows. The band plans to hit the road again in July and August in support of Fever Forms. Tour dates coming soon!

Octopus Project

Whitby

Peek-A-Boo

"Whitby" is the first single from a yet-untitled album of new material by The Octopus Project, planned for release in 2013. The "Whitby" digital single also features an additional, totally different remix of the song by the band.   The "Whitby" music video is a product of the The Octopus Project's collective consciousness. Created, shot and directed by the band, the stop-motion extravaganza was crafted entirely using die-cut colored card stock. Band members meticulously designed each shape in Photoshop then used a cutting machine generally reserved for scrapbooking to cut them out before photographing them in real world settings. The final video consists of over 4,000 separate images.   Whitby by The Octopus Project

Octopus Project

Hexadecagon

Peek-A-Boo

In late 2009, The Octopus Project took time off from touring to write new material and tinker with electronics. In order to achieve their vision for a deeper, more enveloping sonic experience, they needed more than the standard two-channel stereo audio and single projection, and decided to arrange eight speakers in a circle surrounding the audience, who in turn surrounded the band at the center. Overhead were eight synchronized video projections. The performance required an integrated eight-channel audio and eight-channel video system (built by the band themselves), hence the term "hexadecagon," the geometrical name for a sixteen-sided object--in this case, a sixteen-sided audiovisual panorama. The Octopus Project performed Hexadecagon twice for over-capacity crowds during SXSW 2010 to emphatically positive reception. Paste Magazine said, "if there's a such thing as a happiness seizure, be prepared to have one," while The Austin American Statesman described the event as "the trippiest, most elaborate thing The Octopus Project have ever done, and that's a very tall order." USA Today ranked the performance one of its top five shows of SXSW. Buzzing from the success, the band dove head-first into putting the songs to tape. After two months of recording in their home studio, they took everything to Dallas to finish and mix with John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions In the Sky, Clinic, The Walkmen), who then blew it up into a high-definition, ultra-widescreen sonic universe. The music is written to work in layers--originally for an audio canvas of eight channels, but here rearranged and re-orchestrated for...

Octopus Project

Golden Beds Ep

Peek-A-Boo

Following the spectacular 2007 album, Hello, Avalanche, The Octopus Project presents Golden Beds, five different tunes from five different rooms of the neon mansion the band has built. Some are brand new, some represent fresh takes on ideas from the past, but each explores a different facet of their omnivorous sonic creations - from big-riff rock to tiny electronics to blissful sing-alongs. So roll up those shirt sleeves and get ready to dip your arms deep into a kaleidoscopic candy jar filled with tasty Octopus-flavored treats of both the audio and visual varieties. With over 40 minutes of sights and sounds, this new EP will have you strapping on silver-stitched shoes and jumping on Golden Beds without a care for what Mom says. In the video department, the journey through The Octopus Project's bizarre and wonderful world of reverie includes videos by the Zellner Bros., Divya Srinivassan, Phillip Niemeyer and Ryan Junell, Nick Smith, and Toto Miranda. Finally, the live footage of "Truck" from the 2008 Austin City Limits music festival offers a glimpse of the band at their best in the real world, joined on stage by the Austin High School marching band and in the audience by 10,000 waving arms. Having taken a brief respite following a 2008 tour that took them from Lollapalooza to the UK's All Tomorrow's Parties festival and innumerable points in between, The Octopus Project hits the road in the US and Canada this summer to support the release of Golden Beds. Following the...

Octopus Project

Hello Avalanche

Peek-A-Boo

Hello Avalanche, The Octopus Project's third proper full-length on Peek-A-Boo Records, is a bold step forward musically and artistically for the band, whose recent successes include playing the Coachella Festival and several sold-out nationwide tours, receiving a proclamation as one of Rolling Stone's five stand-out artists at SXSW by Senior Editor David Fricke, and sweeping the Austin Music Awards (Best Experimental Band, Best Indie Band, Best Instrumental Band, Best Miscellaneous Instrument - Yvonne Lambert on Theremin! - and top ten placement in eight other categories!).  With ragged, furious distorted guitars at one end of the spectrum and the pure, luminescent tones of the Theremin at the other, the members of The Octopus Project mine a staggering variety of sounds in between (via strings, synthesizers, drums, glockenspiel, trombones, etc.), filling their songs with brilliant contrasting colors and cascading waves of sonic bliss. Although Josh Lambert, Yvonne Lambert and Toto Miranda each have their instrumental specialties, they spread ideas out on as many instruments as possible, each writing for and performing on any sound-maker they can find. And if the instruments themselves weren't enough, many sounds on the record were manipulated by the band to push them even further - inhuman drum breaks three layers deep piled over the original live drum track, a heavenly four-Theremin choir from a Wizard of Oz soundtrack that never existed, guitar parts mulched into bits and reassembled into a tiny Prince army.  While the band's previous records were mainly self-produced, this time The Octopus...

Octopus Project

One Ten Hundred Thousand Million

Peek-A-Boo

***One Ten Hundred Thousand Million may be more subtle and emotional than Identification Parade, but it's just as hooky, just as energetic and sometimes a whole lot noisier. Like the Young Marble Giants if they really were giants, with giant marble instruments-- charming, young, eccentric, honest, true, gentle giants among men.  In the two years between records, Octopus Project have taken the barely controlled chaos of their live performance from coast to coast, playing hundreds of shows. When it came time to record again, the band had a clear idea of what they wanted-- a full-on, surround sound, 3-D, Technicolor studio amalgamation injected with the wild energy they felt in those noisy, tightly-packed clubs. Parts of One Ten Hundred Thousand Million were recorded in concrete stairwells. Other sounds were captured in nice rooms with padded walls and fancy recording equipment.  Their reputation as the band that "hooked up their half-broken electronic shit all wrong" first attracted the attention of Peek-A-Boo Records in 2001, but actually seeing the band play their halfbroken electronic shit way, way too loud sealed the deal, and by the end of the weekend the label had agreed to release the band's brilliant debut, Identification Parade. To date they hold the honor of being the only band recruited to the label after only one show.  

Octopus Project

Identification Parade

Peek-A-Boo

***Drums vs. Drum Machines. Samplers vs. Guitars. Take these oppositional elements, add a willingness to start a band first and learn how to use the gear later, crank it up to 25,000, and that's somewhere in the neighborhood of The Octopus Project, who create a unique style of music for people who like the experimentation of progressive music, the blips and bleeps of electronic music and the raw animalism of rock. ***The Octopus Project is the latest development between longtime collaborators Josh Lambert, Yvonne Lambert and Toto Miranda, filling the gap between electronic and rock musics. Having added drum machines, samplers and keyboards to their standard guitar/drums/bass setup, they just turn everything on at once and end up with what has been best described as "ambidextrous equipment failure junk-tronica." Perhaps something like the rock-plus-electronic sounds of IQU, The Flying Lizards, Stereolab or Cornelius, but way more rock (larger, rougher, more collar-grabbing). The recent arrival of Dustin Kilgore and Nik Snell, both of whom play various instruments, adds to the confusion on stage.  Their reputation as the band that "hooks up their half-broken electronic shit all wrong" first attracts the attention, but actually seeing and hearing half-broken electronic shit played way, way too loud seals the deal.