Finally released digitally because of the COVID shutdown - connect the dots. This is a 4 album set from a period of time that did not have many widely distributed Oneida releases. These cassettes were sold on the road and via mail order where they did an average business - but this material was not available digitally in this quality until now. Grab the masters!

NOTES ON THE TAPES AND TRACKS

The Original Brah Tapes
These tapes represent a fragment of Oneida’s work over something like the last five years. Other material has been released – and plenty more has been recorded and is in some stage of being edited, reviewed, compiled, ignored, or denied. This stuff pretty much bridges a gap for the O that crosses the boundary between our life at the Ocropolis and our subsequent move along with Secret Project Robot to a new space in Bushwick. A few things here were recorded at the Ocropolis before its demise at the end of 2011, and the rest in our backstage studio space at SPR in 2012-2013. The first three tapes were mixed with Colin Marston at his studio Menegroth: the Thousand Caves in Woodhaven, Queens. Tape four was mixed in Barry’s submarine. You can taste the sonar. Art and notes put together and illicitly photocopied by Fat Bobby. Can’t get that old punk stain out of me, and damn don’t I feel like a fourth-gen color copy.


The tracks:

F.T.L.
The outcome of the Ocropolitical process: long-form lyrical narrative unfolding at a pace that infuriates the uninitiated or habitually judgmental. Best taken with a dose of not giving a fuck for a while.

Third Stage
The flip side, literally and figuratively, of FTL. Claws and tears where the first part strokes and shapes.

Pacific Gyre
The Pacific Gyre is the largest self-contained ecosystem on the earth. An array of interconnected circulating ocean currents that corrals a vast sea of life, as well as the largest concentrated collection of human garbage in the universe, it’s at once stable, circular, permeable, and fucked up. Perfect O.

The Real Economy Travel
This one has revealed itself over time to be a work of genius. Kid laid down an all time vocal excursion in a memorable blaze. In the (excised) studio chatter, we blame Bjorn from Dice for not bringing his A game – but the joke was on us. For synth fans – this track features the all-time record for oscillator and sequencer stability on the modular PAIA at the Ocropolis. Don’t know how we made it for like 20 minutes, or whatever….I mean, not that it stays exactly on target, but playing the chaos is really Oneida’s thing anyway.

F.L.T.
This isn’t actually “fusion” even if it inspires similar qualms in me because there’s some heavy playing on this one. No one in the O is educated in music – but I think we should still be allowed to play. This is one of a couple cuts on the Brah Tapes named for Boston songs.

The Real Bad Habit
Kind of a chestnut at this point for the O – the perfect imbalance between flexibility and rigidity. Unlike the rest of the Brah Tapes material, this was actually recorded at Colin’s studio in Woodhaven, and the performance falls under the rubric of “rigorous union,” being performed by Shahin and Bobby on their lonesome. I think this is the best-realized version of the original compositional intent, as it pulls away from and snaps back to rhythmic unison, using time as the central feature of a particular kind of counterpoint. Once you go this far, you can’t go back, which I guess is what the song is saying, so how’s that for a total package.

RPT
A total burner. Recorded live at the Ocropolis with an audience, at one of our public in-studio events that inspired the remote Ocropolis performance installations of 2009-2011. Showtime plays the bass. Titled “RPT” at its birth, this tune is usually known within the O as “Kaddenium” or “Kaddenmium,” after the uncatalogued element discovered by renegade scientist David Kadden. The scientific establishment, unable to reach consensus on its precise atomic weight, has at least agreed that this shit is extremely heavy.

ONEIDA AT YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY
This was recorded live at our backstage SPR studio as just one portion of a day that also included a lot of surprise Creedence. Emily Manzo joins us for a chunk of time. She’s obviously a special player. This recording is Barry on his rig, moog & tape echos, Showtime on the electrocomp, and Bobby (w/Manzo) playing an ace tone and a roland string synth - mixing on the fly w/one of those old radio shack 4-track mixers that have the greatest ever live feel on the faders – so tasty licks all around, sounds like a hell of a band. Steppenwolf not by accident.