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Ollo

If Thief EP

(12 Apostles; US: 16 Jun 2008; UK: Unavailable)

The label so indie it hurts, 12 Apostles knew they had something good when they released the sophomore album from Australia’s Ollo, who rules as the funkier down-under cousin of Scotland’s Beta Band. It would have been dumb of them not to follow it up with a record of rarities and/or remixes. For some reason, the obviously remixed If Thief EP has two versions of the title track “The If If” as well as “Summer Salt” and three of the righteous single “The Campaign for Real Bread”. For a proper remix album, more variety would be necessary, but this release works if you think of it as three singles thrown together for the low, low price of one EP.


In execution, the 40 Thieves rendition of “Summer Salt” is not all that far off from the original, so it’s kinda superfluous. The rest do a solid to commendable job of taking you somewhere different. Particularly striking is Dsico’s late ‘70s funk dub treatment of the pop stutter cut “Campaign for Real Bread” and Neotropic’s unrecognizable downtempo female epic post-rock infusion of the originally wacky, UNKLE like, male sung “The If If”. To be sure, If Theif is a fine, almost essential accompaniment to The If If.

Rating:

Ranta is a music geek from East Vancouver. He spends most of his time researching, procuring, listening to, and writing about music. Since 2004, his work has appeared in such publications as Exclaim!, CBC Music, Tiny Mix Tapes, and PopMatters, and he has been a Polaris Music Prize juror since 2010. He graduated from SFU's Contemporary Arts program with a BFA in music in Summer 2011.


Tagged as: dsico | neotropic | ollo
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Ollo - The Campaign for Real Bread
Related Articles
13 Apr 2007
The If If isn't about to blow any minds, but one gets the impression that that's not what Ollo set out to do.
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