Edge Effects by Josh Ottum
Ottum wasn’t sure he’d even end up finishing another album. It’d been about ten years since he’d tried, during which he made the domestic-maturational rounds: Grad school, home ownership, professorship, parenting. “Along with that comes a lot of existential crisis stuff,” he says. “Who am I? I hope I can keep making music, but I’m afraid I can’t. You know, that type of fear.”
You know—who doesn’t? But behind every crisis is the need for expedient solutions and the release of ego that sometimes follows: Call it the edge effect at Thinking and Doing. Ottum and his band made the album in five days: two for basic tracking, one for overdubs, two for vocals and detail work—no preening, no vanity, no dicking around. What if you took the palliative sterility of ‘80s soft-rock and smeared the lens? What if you asked the prom band to play vaporwave? Can you squeeze jazz from a children’s synthesizer, or meaning from a battery-powered amplifier? Edge Effects.
The first time I heard it, I kept thinking about the marine layer north of San Diego, where my wife’s parents live: how gray and dense it seems in the morning, but how easily—and invariably—it burns off by lunch. As a citizen of the desert (a place of hard light and decisive angles), I find fog seductive but untrustworthy: How is something shapeless actually there?
Wouldn’t you know that Ottum grew up in North County, playing trippy instrumentals with friends over an ocean view: Pat Metheny without the jazz, Windham Hill for kids who come home with sand in their shoes. Edge Effects is marine-layer music: sparkling, eerie, postcard perfect, a little sad. Like the fog, it telegraphs its impermanence—it burns off. Out of the mist, decisions are made: “Grab your friend by the throat and tell him that you love him,” Ottum sings on “Catch On.” But most of the time, we stay on the threshold: Neither turf or grass, past or present, burb or brush. They’d build here if they could. - Mike Powell, Tucson, Arizona
Tracklist
| 1. | Ice Plant and Pools | 2:42 |
| 2. | Depress Descend | 2:53 |
| 3. | Erase the Bar | 3:53 |
| 4. | Sit in Silence | 3:38 |
| 5. | Normal Romantic | 4:57 |
| 6. | After School Special | 2:39 |
| 7. | Lung X-ray | 3:54 |
| 8. | So Good | 1:52 |
| 9. | Now or Never | 3:45 |
| 10. | Catch On | 6:11 |
| 11. | Edge Effects | 4:50 |
Credits
Josh Ottum - electric and acoustic guitars, SynthPlus 60, vocals
Davin Givhan - electric bass & guitar
James McAlister - drums, percussion
John Clement Wood - SynthPlus 60, Yamaha Grand Piano
with
Rosie Thomas - backing vocals on "So Good"
Produced by Chris Schlarb
at BIG EGO, Long Beach, CA.
Mixed by Chris Schlarb and Josh Ottum
Engineered by Devin O'Brien
Recorded January 10th - 14th, 2022
Mastered by Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters, Los Angeles, CA.
Cover photography by Josh Ottum
Back cover photography by Devin O'Brien and Chris Schlarb
Layout by David J. Woodruff
All songs written by Josh Ottum
Published by Bernasconi Music (BMI)
