About 2 years after their debut effort ‘In Irons’, The Oslo-based neo-kraut / scandipsych / doom-blues / post-rockers Orsak:Oslo are back with a defiant step out of the musical underground, delivering a sound that has been grounded and perfected over a decade of honing their craft.
Their latest offering, ‘Silt and Static’ – relesed through Vinter Records (ARV, Moe, Norna…) – is a dark, slow brew of psych, dystopian post-rock, and trippy doom : an unholy marriage between impulsive improvisation and thoughtful composition.
While the post-rock « bubble » may have burst years ago under a wave of oversaturation, Orsak:Oslo offers a visceral correction to the template-based rehash. They channel the heavy, desert-bleached weight of All Them Witches and the sprawling psychedelic density of U.S. Christmas with some slow-burner vibes from Massive Attack creating an ecosystem where harmony and dissonance are equally respected.
This is an album born of pure spontaneity; recorded with the tape rolling and no roadmap, it captures the collective at their most stripped-down and unfiltered. Melodies and new harmonies were later carefully woven in, layer by layer, yet the result remains raw, unpolished, and true to the aura and musical preconditions laid down from the start. It is « bleak yet beautiful, » echoing the ritualistic atmosphere of Wyatt E. and the sharp, modern grit of Zahn.
Throughout these nine expansive tracks, the band avoids the clichés of the slow-build and predictable crescendo, instead delivering beefy riffery and immersive, cinematic bursts of energy that reach far beyond genre confines. The beauty of the work lies in its vital emotional resonance, where the music speaks through a sense of forward trajectory rather than just volume.
It is an imaginative, inspired work of a band operating with a rare level of cohesion—a journey through wordless world-building that challenges the listener to find resonance within the dark, dystopian headspace we all share.
