California duo
Mondo Lava whisk their listeners away to strange, exotic locales using the cheapest, most rudimentary equipment they can get their hands on. With little more than a Casio, some bongos, a tape deck, and maybe a cowbell, they make lush, tongue in cheek psychedelia which sounds like a 16-bit video game soundtrack imitating vintage exotica records. The precious few recordings
Mondo Lava released prior to Ogre Heights contained sun-baked guitar licks, but this one appears to lack them, focusing on echo-covered tropical percussion sounds and loose MIDI melodies. "Dreams" and "Midnight Carousel" are filled with synthetic bird calls, sounding like a zoo filled with winged creatures who turn out to be aliens or robots. The album's highlight is its longest piece, the nine-minute "Hippodrome," which starts out with lightly tapping drums and simple keyboard arpeggios which could be from the intro to an old trance record, except they sound like they're emanating from a dank basement rather than constructed in a lab using state of the art technology. The track unfolds at an even tempo, with spaced-out melodies punctuated by push-button vibraslap, and a digital sweep approximating ocean waves adding to the track's beach-friendly atmosphere. Ogre Heights is a playful, relaxing journey which sounds far more otherworldly than what one can imagine its recording sessions looked like. ~ Paul Simpson