CONCERT REVIEW: Ozric Tentacles @ HighLine Ballroom, NYC

By Zac Bardou

A few months ago, British psychedelic rock icons Ozric Tentacles had, by all indications, dissolved, and “disappeared off into the ether.” Long-time members, like keyboardist Seaweed and flopping flautist Jon Egan, have departed from the band in recent years and no upcoming tour dates seemed forthcoming. The band’s quasi-official website had ceased to exist and most fan sites provided only the most dated of information.

This spring however, rumors in the United States of the band’s demise were quelled by reports that the Ozrics would perform at the All Good Music Festival in West Virginia. A short time later, two scheduled appearances were confirmed at the Wakarusa Music Festival in Kansas and eventually a new Web site, ozrics.com, appeared, urging fans not to fear any ether-related evaporations.

In addition to the festival appearances and a quick jaunt up to Quebec, the band would also make a one-night return to New York, at the Meatpacking District’s new HighLine Ballroom, before hastening back across the sea. When that Friday the thirteenth of July finally arrived however, the return of the Ozric Tentacles unfolded with almost tragic anticlimax.

Maybe it was because the String Cheese Incident was playing at the Beacon. Maybe it was because Dispatch was taking the stage at Madison Square Garden. Quite probably it was because those who had once scoured the Internet for news of these elusive musicians had given up in recent months and didn’t even know that the band was there; whatever the reason, the sparse crowd that showed up at the HighLine that night was swallowed up by the intimate confines of one of New York’s finest new music venues.

Ozric Tentacles are one of those rare rock outfits whose music truly defies any semblance of categorization. Culling inspiration from the farthest reaches of the globe, galaxy and beyond, founding guitar and synth guru Ed Wynne and the ever amorphous Ozrics ensemble have, for over two decades, delighted music-lovers with a ballistic blend of psychedelic rock, ambient soundscapes and deep dub grooves that channels ethnological musical traditions of the East, the West and every variety of society in betwixt and between.

Most of the band’s many different configurations over the last 20 years have boasted five or six members, but when the lights went down at the HighLine Ballroom and the small crowd cheered as mightily as it realistically could, only three musicians emerged from the shadows backstage. Wynne was joined only by his wife Brandi, on synths and bass, and percussionist Ollie Seagle. As the trio launched off into the Erpland classic “Eternal Wheel,” the crowd seemed too surprised to greet the song with the adulation, gyration and unshakable fixation it was due.

Web resources had suggested that the band’s line-up was currently in a constant state of flux, but it seemed few in the audience had expected to find the Lernaean Hydra reduced to the likes of her sibling, Cerberus. As the concert unfolded, however, it quickly began to seem as though this particular three-headed pooch had taken lessons in ventriloquism, vocal impersonation and advanced beatbox.

Ed and Brandi Wynne juggled keys, strings and all manner of sampling devices to try and channel a band of five or six, often fooling the ear if the eyes were closed. The trio deftly performed songs off of many different albums from throughout the years, as though planting newer material to sonic bloom amongst those standards that had thrilled fans since the 80’s.

Seagle, his drums and array of percussion spurring the grooves onward with tireless tintinnabulation and boom crash beats, laid down an undulating foundation of rhythm that bounced buoyantly between time signatures. The multi-dimensional mimicry of the Wynnes’ synthesizers swelled from mellow ambience to rabid frenzy, as though hot in pursuit of the pace-setting percussionist. Guitar licks peeled through the air like the cries of a mythological Wurm and, at times, the band could have passed for one of its former earth-shaking incarnations.

However, trying to fill musical space and a half empty ballroom with sampled instrumentation instead of fourth and fifth band members made it virtually impossible for the trio to fashion for the audience an experience as intensely throbbing and perversely mind expanding as those of year’s past. Hopefully both musicians and fans will be in better attendance when the Ozric Tentacles again emerge from the ether.