Switzerland’s Ølten has one of the most entertaining bios I’ve come across in a long time. They obviously don’t need a hack like me to help with any part of the description process, so aside from my informing you that the band is an instrumental trio rocking it all sludge/post-metal/atmospheric/ambient/stoner like, let’s nab a couple of zingers from their various profiles on various online portals:
“…Ølten is formed by three musicians who like beards, checked shirts, vintage amps and Werner Gunthor. The band from the Watch Valley in Switzerland plays an instrumental post-porn-sludge tuned at the lowest by the Devil himself…”
“…If Ølten were to be a city, it would definitely lie at the heart of a triangle made of Longyearbyin, Pripiat and Balsthal – wherever the hell that means!…”
“…With instruments sounding like they’ve been tuned in a basement by the devil himself, these guys will undoubtedly spark the interest of young anthropologists desperate for a new case study…”
Mode is their second and most recent release and, in addition to exhibiting engaging written and musical talent, the band has demonstrated a keen visual sense as well. As such, we present the trio’s new video for the new song, “Güdel.” I was going to wax poetically, and confusedly, about the video’s content (though, I will say that now that MTV, MuchMusic and other former music video channels no longer have music videos as their focus, it’s funny how hardly any band actually utilizes the once-customary shit-ton of footage of themselves playing, miming and/or lip-syncing the song in question) and storyline, but once again decided to let the band take over:
“When we started recording Mode one of our wishes was to have a really good video. We called our friend Mathias Montavon (who was in charge/director of the teaser for our first EP) on a Friday night and we drank some beers and listened to the album while Mathias decided which song would be the best for the video…. the winner, obviously, was ‘Güdel.’ After listening to the track a bunch of times, Mathias wrote the story for it based on how he felt listening to it: a strange story with a child, two men, a hunter and the winter. After that, our goal was to find the man for the video – the child and the hunter are played by Mathias’ son and father. The video was filmed in some place at the Canton of Jura, in Switzerland, but the first place we shot the video was in a small village called Vellerat. If you type the name into Google you will see that the village is at 666 meters… You can see the devil on the clip.”
Mode is out now jointly on Hummus Records and Division Records
www.oltenband.com
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