OffOnOff - Slap & Tickle

OffOnOff
Slap & Tickle
(2009, Smalltown Superjazz)
RIYL = MoHa!, Zu, The Ex

On the follow up to their extraordinary free-jazz/noise-rock debut, Clash (another album that slipped through the FG cracks), OffOnOff offer us the marathon blockbuster Slap & Tickle. The album consists of two enormous tracks the band recorded live at some awesome jazz festival in Norway and proves that OffOnOff are not only instrumentally proficient (an understatement), but are endlessly inventive and intelligent and have the physical endurance of a Herculean athlete. Consider that the opening track, “Slap,” is over thirty-two minutes in length. A lesser band (read: any other band on earth) in a similar improv situation would flounder and sink, but OffOnOff seems to flourish. Where another band would require the stamina of the listener, OffOnOff are so agile, so conscious of their creation, so good, that the shoulder any and all stamina that might be had at their expense and allow listeners the pure joy of simply absorbing the kaleidoscope of noisy twists and turns, the scamper and pummel of drums, the squalor. Slap & Tickle simply owns it all. So tight and concise and hectic and frenzied and beautifully rockin’! Incredibly good stuff.

-Thistle