Today, O. – the London-based duo of baritone saxophonist Joe Henwood and drummer Tash Keary – return with details of their highly anticipated debut album WeirdOs and a colossal new single titled “Green Shirt”. The album is due out June 21 via Speedy Wunderground.
Honing their fearless sound through a residency at Brixton’s iconic venue The Windmill, as well as on support slots across the UK and Europe with fellow heavyweights black midi and Gilla Band, O. have now distilled their unique live energy into their debut album, WeirdOs. Featuring production from Dan Carey, WeirdOs is Tash and Joe at their most raucous and free.
Across 10 tracks of high-octane instrumentals recorded live to tape, the duo encompass everything from cathartic dancefloor drops, to junglist breakbeats, intricate jazz lines, and sludgy, menacing doom metal.
Coming hot on the heels of last November’s debut EP SLICE – which won enthusiastic support from Pitchfork, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan and Rough Trade – the new single “Green Shirt” sees the band expanding on their ever evolving, epiphanic sound combining thundering blast beats with labyrinthine sax.
The band describe the single as “a short rock/metal rinse out. To match the distorted amp sounds coming from Joe, we put Tash’s drums through distorted guitar amps on this one. It’s named after Tash’s favourite green flannel shirt, that was lost several times and then eaten by a dog.”
The single is accompanied by a video taken from the perspective of Speedy Wunderground’s resident pooch Poppy, traversing Streatham High Street and a studio performance by O., before tearing up a green flannel shirt.
Watch/share the video for “Green Shirt” HERE
Listen to “Green Shirt” via all platforms HERE
Going on to speak about the album, the band says, “WeirdOs is a dark, heavy album based around our love of riffy basslines, blast beats, dub, noise, and all the weird sounds in between. It was recorded live across 2 weeks in the studio with Dan Carey and aims to replicate the feeling of being at one of our gigs.”
Few things compare to the experience of watching O. live. Featuring the immense, vibrational bass-weight of Joe Henwood’s baritone saxophone played through his array of dub and distortion pedals, as well as the blisteringly precise yet expressively fierce drumming of Tash Keary, the South London duo’s shows are an assault of sound. With only two instruments, O. encompass everything from the euphoria of the dancefloor to the earworming hooks of memorable melodies. Theirs is an infectious, irrepressible music.
“We’re just two people making a big sound, unafraid to give it our all when we play,” Joe says. “We’re interested in taking it to the limit – it’s something that comes naturally to us.”
“The album name is inspired by people coming up to us after shows and saying, ‘this feels like music for weirdos,’” Tash laughs. “We listen and jam to lots of different styles of music and it all filters through naturally in our sound – we’re just expressing ourselves.”
Tash first took to the drums as a shy nine-year-old, channelling its monolithic sound as a means of self-expression. As the only musician in the family, music never seemed like anything other than a hobby, but after joining grassroots music organisation Tomorrow’s Warriors in 2018 and becoming part of their Female Frontline band,
