The Oscillating Fan Club

The Oscillating Fan Club
Feverish Dreams As Told By...
LocoGnosis 2008
Available on vynil w/ MP3 download at Oscillating Fan Club shows and @ Stormy Records of Dearborn, Car City Records of St. Clair Shores, and our very own Record Collector in Ferndale
A very nice review by Mr. Ryan Allen of Detour Magazine (www.detour-mag.com)
Just when you thought Detroit’s rock underbelly was done cooking up inspirational and original jams (we’re talking the likes of Wildcatting, Prussia, and Dutch Pink), the Oscillating Fan Club’s Feverish Dreams As Told By… comes along and drops a massive and awesome surf-influenced psyche-rock bomb directly on our heads. Formed in 2004 by high school chums Ray Thompson and Pierce Reynolds, the OFC came together over a joint love for 1960s Brit-pop and the more experimental sounds of string wranglers like Sonic Youth and Television. After kicking around for a few years — releasing one EP entitled Beatles Catting Wildly for local-indie force Loco Gnosis in August of 2007 — the OFC have honed their influences, and the result is this 16-song strong monster of an album. Rowdy tracks like “My Grave Face” may nod to the Pixies, and “Suburban Lovers of the Dead” would appeal to anybody looking for a perfect modern combo of Tapes ‘n Tapes’ quirk and the Shins at their most amped up, but mostly, these dudes are digging on some different shit all together. While other groups waste their time searching for the perfect pop moment, or perhaps beating a dead horse, the OFC are busy digesting and regurgitating reverb-drenched surfedelia (”Party Hat”), Eastern European-style guitar skronk (”7 Nights in Khartoum”), and space-aged bachelor pad inspired instrumentals (”Acoustic Jellyfish”) — all flanked by moments of psyche-rock brilliance that wouldn’t be out of place on Olivia Tremor Control’s classic Black Foliage album. It’s the kind of stuff that would make Thurston Moore, Frank Black, and local psyche-pop hero Matthew Smith (of Outrageous Cherry) freak out with enthusiastic glee. Plus, these guys put on a live show that is as unpredictable and unhinged as the directions they choose to take on Feverish Dreams; a winning combination, if you ask us. Score another one for Detroit’s new school of weird. — Ryan Allen
...and from Mr. Jeff Milo
5/5 Stars
Here's what we have: exuberant shock grooves, with hard, buzzing spaz-marches and sideways poeticisms over a psychedelic sand-splotched tuxedo-wearing charm, or, put simply, superbly done guitar-pop. The Oscillating Fan Club have grown into a beautiful beast, with their own war stories of weeknight club shows, smoke-soaked amps and broken pedals.They’ve been agilely contorting themselves from the bedraggled and spastic indie-scuffed calypso creep-pop of their genesis into a sleek and stately aristocrat of subtle psychedelic surf tones. From the wavy grooves of glammy guitar riffs and the irresistible hooks of visceral early-day garage rock, to the noodly experimental guitar errantry of art-punk elegance, to the wry and spacey melancholy poetics of Reed or Pollard, we get bam-bam-jungle boogie invigoration that slides swiftly into lethally precise percussion. It’s the fuzzy euphoria of a smooth cruise down a sun-soaked freeway in a convertible that slips into informal freakouts with “party hats” in fatalistic embrace of the atomic age. With overwhelming layers of spindly-fingered guitar work and percussion from post-rock jazz, there's high-roar vocals that both swoon and shout. — JEFF MILO (Real Detroit Weekly)
The Oscillating Fan Club
Beatles Catting Wildly
LocoGnosis 2007
Available at:
www.myspace.com/locognosis
ALBUM REVIEWS ......or shall we say REVIEW
The Oscillating Fan Club
Beatles Catting Wildly
LocoGnosis
4/5 stars
Dexterous quartet of psychedelic-surf-swing debuts an EP with precision and measured mayhem. Explosive jaunts ring with pedal-pushed feedback and twangy pick-ups, errant and addictive hooks form a razzle-dazzle swing and combine it with rampant jaunts of ethereal guitar overlay and obtuse, staggering rhythms. — J. Milo
Oscillating Fan Club
Sub-urban Lovers, Robot Suppers and Gnome Cadence
The Real Detroit Weekly - July 31st, 2007
Blue Moon In June
Real Detroit Weekly - June 26, 2007
The Oscillating Fan Club: Makes A Love Mix For The Girl Of Its Dreams
Real Detroit Weekly - Feb. 14 2007
The Oscillating Fan Club: Hypothetical Hobgoblins
Real Detroit Weekly - May 3rd 2006
The MySpace "Revolution": How Long Before We Download Dinner
Real Detroit Weelky - Jan. 9th 2006
FIVE THREE DIAL TONE PODCAST - MAY 10th 2007
"This band is manically creative, and lucky for us, they have quite the affinity for a pop sound." "There’s simply no use winding their heaviest influences down…os mutantes, beatles, zombies, stereolab, velvet underground, roxy music, jonathan richman, the kinks, caetano veloso, antonio carlos jobim, elvis costello, the ventures, talking heads, tortoise, dinosaurs, robots, ghosts…, they’re all relentless musicphiles who devote Michealangelo-esque passion to crafting and perfecting their quirky little tunes."
THE DETROIT FREE PRESS - MARCH 9th 2007
"The Oscillating Fan Club is a Detroit quartet that bills itself as "creep pop." The band plays off-kilter melodies and gives a noticeable nod to '60s and '70s-era guitar-based pop and rock. It's not quite garage rock, but on the driveway outside the garage." Swirling, psychedelic '60s style guitars that call to mind Dick Dale and British Invasion-era bands, offset by a sharp, edgy songwriting structure that could be compared to Television or Pavement, and heavily reverbed vocals. "We're very hard to pinpoint. We're all music-philes that enjoy playing a weird mixture of music," says Thompson. "We're somewhat danceable in a very odd way. We don't sound like the typical Detroit band."
MOTOR CITY ROCKS - MARCH 8th 2007
The Oscillating Fan Club – Baker’s Streetcar, 10:15 p.m. - Psychedelic brit-pop misfits with unkempt hair, funny t-shirts, lots of pick-ups in their guitars and fuzzy pedals to manipulate the sultry sounds of their surfy-swingy guitar acrobatics. Howling crescendos over moods of both 60’s tropacalia and 90’s indie-rock…with built-in folklore of robotic dinosaurs, ancient wind ghosts, tragic yesterlores and secret penchants for the Yakuza.
THE METRO TIMES - MARCH 7th 2007
Psychedelic pop influences. Jazzmaster pickups too, for that buttery-stoned tone, you know
REAL DETROIT WEEKLY - JANUARY 17th 2007
"Completely shakable rock n' roll - if people that couldn't dance still gyrated their bodies faux-uncontrolably this would be the soundtrack of the weekend. Basically if Dick Dale, Beck and Television all dropped acid on M-1 and had an orgy with Karen O on the Boulevard, then this band would be the bastard love child."
THE LAGER HOUSE - OCTOBER 26th 2005
"Strange, experimental combo whos music tends to fall somewhat into the out category... as in out THERE. Definitely unique, fun and occasionally rocking indie psyche. "