#o monolith

[starlingfawn]

the city burns

the blades turn

original art and character design inspired by squid's o monolith

I am currently working on a MAP part, but I managed to cook up this little illustration over the span of a few days... 2 hrs total I think? I have no free time currently

more squid fanart yipeee [I am entering a squid phase rn] [please listen to squid i am begging you, absolutely lifechanging] [...their music is so good you just have to let it grown on you]

designed this weird messed up creature to represent the album's nature... lizard-lion-devil-dog thing?? might turn into an oc someday

if you want to get into squid:

[innovacancy]

Squid Paradise Rock Club 14 February 2024 Full coverage and gallery here

[indigo-jaws]

[reckonslepoisson]

O Monolith, Squid (2023)

As one of the blander and more predictable bands in the Windmill scene, Squid needed to get a little more distinctive on the group’s sophomore. And that they do. O Monolith is more varied in its vocals and rhythm and less prone to shouting and yelping for the sake of it. It’s decent.

Pick: ‘Undergrowth’

[dustedmagazine]

Squid — O Monolith (Warp)

O Monolith by Squid

Squid moves further out from spike-y, rant driven post-punk to mathy abstraction in this second full-length. My review of the debut centered Ollie Judge’s yelping, fracturing vocals, but this time, the sound around him is the thing, denser, more textured and putting feelers out towards jazz and proggy post-art-rock.

Consider, for instance, “Swing (in a Dream)” an intricate puzzle box song reportedly inspired by a Fragonard painting. But while the rococo master’s work is plush and pleasing, Squid’s reverie shivers with fever, slashes with abstract blots of sound. Synths and percussion pulse and clash in surging irregular rhythms. Melodic lines squiggle off in unexpected, 12-tonal ways.  A fuzz-crusted rock guitar vies for space with fluctuating layers of keyboard song, while a cowbell clanks. A trumpet blows in, contributing to a jazzy feel, but the overall vibe is cerebrally off-kilter. It might remind you of These New Puritans or even Ryley Walkers later, proggier experiments.  

Elsewhere a febrile groove festers, as on bass heavy “Undergrowth,” which filters dance hedonism through a palpable sense of dread. The cut moves inexorably through unreal soundscapes, as Judge chants disassociatively about what’s lurking in the ground cover. It’s a rave, a nightmare and an sci-fi movie soundtrack, ending in a hazy, half legible crescendo of dissolving sounds.  

These songs grew around ideas that Squid worked out live, but they took shape in the uneasy isolation of the COVID pandemic and lockdown. You can hear both elements jostling for precedence, the celebratory euphoria of live performance filtering through the doubts and uncertainties and complications of extended time in one’s own head. It’s the combination that’s so thrilling here, in a sound that swirls and envelopes and jitters but remains just out of reach, like the dream of a dream of a dream of life before.

Jennifer Kelly

[upalldown]

Squid - O Monolith

Second full-length album from the Brighton post-punk band produced by Dan Carey

8/13

Like Squid’s debut, O Monolith begs for attentive listening. While 2021's Bright Green Field was by no means the serene country land of its title – in fact, it leant heavily on concrete – comparatively it is a pastoral stroll. O Monolith is a torn-up patchwork of terrain; scorching sands sutured violently into haunting forestry, sprawling ocean scapes tidally enveloping dense metropolitan high-rises.

The non-hierarchical ethic of the Brighton five-piece affects a wilding selection of contrasting musical ideas upon their output. For most bands, this tapestry of sounds would flounder and reject its connectivity, but Squid successfully stitch diverse concepts into one brooding work.

The ecstatic electro-terror of Swing (In A Dream) should (but does not) jar in its preceding of Devil’s Den, a woodwind-heavy number, harmonious and gentle in its infancy but characteristically explosive in its latter moments. The Blades is premised on a minimalist glitch-beat evocative of Syro-era Aphex Twin, and grows to a fuzzing swirl tangling with Ollie Judge’s wailing.

The final track of the project is the most worthy of being considered monolithic in its own right. If You Had Seen the Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away provides three distinct sonic variations in its first minute alone, and does not rest on its laurels from thereon out. It encapsulates O Monolith, and elevates it.

https://www.theskinny.co.uk/music/reviews/albums/squid-o-monolith

[iamlisteningto]

Squid’s O Monolith

[wormsinthadirt]

IT'S SQUID DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHERE MA SQUID HEADS AT??!?!?!??!?!