An exclusive interview with OOOD - Strange Daze 13th Birthday

Lucy May Ireland found time to catch up with OOOD during their busy gig and production schedule, to discuss their forthcoming performance at Strange Daze 13th Birthday.

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Date published: 20th Aug 2016

Lucy May Ireland found time to catch up with OOOD during their busy gig and production schedule, to discuss their forthcoming performance at Strange Daze 13th Birthday. Read what they had to say...

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Strange Daze Sound System are celebrating their birthday at The Zombie Shack in Manchester on the 30th September after thirteen years of successful multi-genre parties across the UK.
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Strange Daze grew in popularity during the early noughties, organising outdoor events all over the UK. Later, they settled in to the Manchester club-scene, working alongside the likes of Daylite Robbery, Stumblefunk, Monkey Puzzle, GASH, Compression, Hybrid UV and many more.
Collaboratively, the formula laid out in their early 'Sketch' and 'Missing' events, became a template for many other northern multi-genre indoor festivals which followed in the decade after.
Alongside their Strange Daze resident DJs, the night has featured international artists such as Utah Saints, Eat Static, Art Of Trance, Union Jack, Mood Deluxe, Phuture Primitive, and hundreds more at over 120 events.
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They have also collaborated with other successful nights such as Manchester's undisputed Electro-Swing heavy-weights, Prohibition and they have provided after parties for the acclaimed Manchester indoor festival, Illuminaughty.
To celebrate their 13th Birthday, Strange Daze are returning to their roots with a two-room event. The main room club will be 'Psychedelic Trance, Hypnotic Techno and filthy Acidic beats'! The bar room will be open all day with free entry, featuring a team of old resident DJs. From late-afternoon they will also have a selection of special guests who will play the best in classic party tunes that shaped and inspired the night.
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Headlining the main room, are Colin and Rama of Psytrance quartet OOOD (Out of Our Depth). Formed in 1994, they have had four members, Colin, Steve, Rama and Ryokan since 2001. Praised for their live sets since their London debut in 1995, their unique style sees them using live instruments such as guitar, drums, keyboards and percussion as an intrinsic part of their performance.
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n the early 2000?s they took to the studio to record their third album 'Free Range' (Organic, 2006) after their first two albums were caught up in the bankruptcy of two distributors. Undeterred, OOOD's third album was regarded by many reviewers as one of the best Psytrance releases of the year. Two years later they released 'Fourthought' (Phar Psyde, 2008) a psychedelic journey through Downtempo, Breaks, Electro, Blues and a varied selection of Psytrance, once again attracting 11/10 A+' reviews, centralising themselves within the scene as one of the few acts whom, from it's birth, were still contributing. Events such as Boom (Portugal), Universo Paralello (Brazil), Fusion (Germany), Glade (UK) and Vortex (South Africa), and many others in Japan, Russia and across Europe have witnessed OOOD's unique shows in their mission to 'have a good time, spread a little joy and write the best tunes they can.' It's been nearly 12 years since OOOD's last live visit to Strange Daze; today we caught up with Rama, Colin and Steve to discuss the Psytrance scene and their creative process.
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What do you guys think of the Psytrance scene in Manchester? It?s been almost 12 years since your last live visit to Strange Daze, how are you looking forward to returning?
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Rama: In our experience, it is a tight knit, vibrant scene based around some key promoters, notably Strange Daze, AudioAddictz and Illuminaughty.
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Colin: The vibe has always been great whenever we've been up there, and obviously some of the country's most prominent Psytrance nights happen in Manchester. We don't get to come up here as much as we'd like but when we do we have a great time!
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Steve: Love it. Always good!
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You guys have been working together since 1994 - What is the creative process like working with three other people, how is the creative process split between the four of you?
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C: One of our strengths is that with 4 people in the band, it's natural to have a good deal of variation in the construction and sound of our tracks because there are so many different combinations of people to work in. We rarely all come together in the studio; certainly at the moment most OOOD sessions are with only two of us at any one time, but most of us get to work on most tracks to some degree. Steve, Ryo and I all have individual styles as producers and although I do most of the hardcore mix engineering, the programming and production is increasingly shared between us. Rama has great ideas and a fantastic DJ brain (like Steve and Ryo) but doesn't tend to get hands-on in the studio until it's time to plan our live sets.
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Do you prefer to play in smaller club environments or to bigger festival crowds?
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R: The more intimate clubs mean a closer interaction with the audience, something we're looking forward to in Manchester.

C: Yes, we prefer to play in smaller club environments or to bigger festival crowds.
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S: The size of the crowd can influence things, but it's the atmosphere created that counts.
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Do you have side projects or are you all OOOD exclusive?
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R: I'm OOOD exclusive, Colin and Steve both collaborate outside the band, and Steve has been working on completing a solo album project.
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S: I'm writing a 3-track EP with Sean Crollman aka 'Zzbing' at the moment, there's some acoustic stuff with Alex Gaves in the pipeline and I'm just completing a load of my own tracks which will possibly be released as an album. However they're quite eclectic so maybe EPs or singles on different labels.
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C: Apart from the solo stuff I've been working on mainly for my own amusement, I've been collaborating with a very talented Greek duo called Outer World Elements who are part of the Etnicanet family, and Tim Healy and I are one track into what may well turn into a new ongoing collaboration. I've also written recently with Nervasystem, and am working on a couple of tracks with a super-talented young musician and producer called Sanial.
Ryo is busy in Japan and looking forward to finding time to record some traditional instruments, to use as a basis for his next tracks.
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You guys have played gigs and festivals all over the world - where has been your favourite to date?
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R: Having recently been so lucky to play at Fusion Festival's 20th anniversary in Germany, we came away from it absolutely buzzing. The production is second to none and the diversity of music needs to be heard to be believed.
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C: Yes, Fusion has to be up there for sure, along with opening the second half of Boom Festival on the Dance Temple stage in 2010. But then I think back to a small semi-private party in a small gallery in Switzerland where we played a 5-hour live set, that was pretty special too. The small ones can be particularly intense.
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S: What they said. Plus sunset on the main stage at Universo Paralello, and a small open-air party on a spectacular mountainside in Japan.
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How does the UKs Psytrance scene compare to other countries?
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R: It's in a healthy state as far I'm aware. Lots of new quality producers and although there is only one dedicated Psychedelic festival, Triplicty. Psytrance features at nearly all the other big ones.
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C: The UK scene is hampered somewhat by the fact it's in the UK, with the UK's weather, legal system and density of population. In terms of events it thrives nonetheless, with plenty of stuff happening in clubs and outdoors too.
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You're about to release your 5th album, how long does the process usually take?
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R: Ages! We're actually working toward our 6th album currently.
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C: It takes as long as it takes. We're not an act that can bang out an album a year, and I don't think we'd want to be, if it meant we couldn't take the time needed to get things sounding absolutely right to our satisfaction. Up to now it's taken us between 2 and 6 years between albums.
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There has been a lot of new advancements in DJ technology in the last few years, have you brought any of these into your sets or do you prefer to keep it traditional?
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R: We're lucky to have been able to tread a line between using the versatility of Ableton and live instrumentation.
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C: We've always had a balance between 'traditional' instruments like keyboards and guitar, and things like Ableton, which provides our playback and also lets Rama trigger samples and FX. For our kind of live performance there's no need to have the latest DJ bells and whistles, but if it's a DJ set you're talking about, bring it on!
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Psytrance is associated with its artwork as well as its music, do you try to incorporate that into your brand as DJs? Any favourite artists?
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C: Definitely as a band the visual side of releases is important to us, as I guess it is for most acts. Our album cover art gets as much thought from us as does the music, we design it in-house wherever we can. I feel the artwork, the album title and the music itself all work together to create the vibe of the album as a whole. We tend to stay away from the whole fractal/new age areas of psychedelia for our artwork; we have our tentacles in various different forms of psychedelic music and it's good to reflect that visually.

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A big thank you to the guys for taking some time out to talk to us today!
For more info on their forthcoming gigs and releases, check them out the links below, and be sure to follow them on Facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/OOOD.music
http://www.flow-bookings.com/
http://www.myspace.com/oood
http://oood.spreadshirt.co.uk/

STRANGE DAZE 13th birthday event details and tickets, here - https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Manchester/The-Zombie-Shack/Strange-Daze-13th-Birthday/12808691/

(Image of OOOD courtesy of the band and photographer Henry Clayton, at "Ninjaprints". Be sure to check his other work, here - www.facebook.com/groups/ninjaprints

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