The latest album “Sorcs 80” by Osees explores personal themes, including trust and betrayal

Transmission 077: Interview with John Dwyer

• Instrumentation Shift: Osees completely abandoned guitars and keyboards for this record, opting for a double-saxophone attack and electronic samplers to keep their sound evolving.
• Nostalgic Roots: The album is a sonic tribute to John Dwyer’s childhood in 1980, drawing heavy inspiration from sci-fi, fantasy novels, and early role-playing games.
• Lyrical Catharsis: Many tracks serve as a therapeutic response to betrayal and the “repulsive” greed Dwyer experienced in the music business and the broader political climate.

John Dwyer, the prolific musician and frontman of the band OCS, discusses the creation and influences behind their latest album, “Sorcs 80.”  Drawing from his childhood fascination with gaming and fantasy, the album features a unique sonic palette, including a prominent saxophone section. The album touches on themes of trust and betrayal, drawing from both personal and wider experiences. The record marks a shift in sound, dropping guitars for saxophones. Dwyer talks about the ideas behind this latest musical change and hints at electrifying plans for live performances.

Title: Sorcs 80
Artist: Osees
Release Date: 2024-08-09
Genres: Garage Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Synth Punk
Label: Castle Face Records
Description: John Dwyer of Oh Sees discusses "Sorks 80," an album blending childhood influences, jazz instrumentation, and themes of trust and betrayal.

This interview is also published in issue no. 01 of our free digital magazine Retrofuturista.

How did the concept of a new album Sorcs 80 come about and what inspired the album’s title?

Sorcs 80 harkens back to my childhood, particularly gaming. We often have references to this kind of thing in our band because it was such an influential part of my childhood. Before I got into music, I was really into role-playing games, sci-fi, and fantasy novels.

Sorc is short for Sorcerer, which is referenced in titles of albums by Jack DeJohnette and Miles Davis that I’m a big fan of. The 80 is a reference to a year, a definitive year in my life when I was six years old and learning all these cool things – a simpler time, I guess.

As far as the instrumentation of the record goes, we just wanted to have a challenge and try something new. I’ve been into changing it up more than usual lately. For instance, A Foul Form featured Tom Dolis, my keyboard player, playing guitar with me, and there was hardly any synthesizer or keys on the record. The previous record was very synthesizer-heavy. So I thought since we had done both of those things, we could pivot and do something really strange and new.

What was it like incorporating a saxophone section into your music?

We’ve done it before. We’ve actually worked with several different horn players over the years, but this one is probably one of the more prominent. It’s featured on almost the entire record. We’ve had horn players on OCS records – they’re on Drop, on Castlemania. Over the years we’ve had French horns, saxophone, trumpet, no tuba yet, but maybe on the next record.

It was really fun. We have this guy CansaFis Foote, who is from the band No Doctors back in the day. And my friend Brad Caulkins here in Los Angeles, who has played on a lot of my improvised projects. He was on Witch Egg and Bent Arcana, Moon Drenched. I’ve done a lot of work with Brad. Brad has played on a handful of OCS records as well.

How did the recording initial demos on a cassette four track influence the final sound of the album?

The original recordings, the demos, are really filthy, just recorded really poorly and quickly. The idea was to have it be really quick and dirty. Even though we ended up recording on an eight track quarter inch, which is only twice the size of a four track tape, its fidelity definitely jumps up a bit.

I kind of crushed it really hard to the machine, meaning that it would be really sort of burned out sounding, which it does. After hearing the demos for a while, I think we just naturally dug on that sound. So it still sounds a little bit homebrewed, as it were.

Can you discuss the narrative behind Cassius Brutus and Judas Tekel’s themes of betrayal?

It’s been a complicated few years all over the world for everybody. Politics are complicated, and I’ve learned a lot these past few years about being in business with certain people. It’s complicated when money is involved because money tends to make people behave in a way that I think they wouldn’t normally behave. It’s tough to trust, and I feel like I don’t behave that way personally. I’ve always made it a point to believe there’s enough to go around.

It’s always shocking to me when people are greedy. I understand looking out for number one – that’s certainly everybody’s instinctual imperative to take care of yourself first. But I was really affected by this sort of behavior over the past few years in my life and find it really repulsive. A way for me to expunge these feelings therapeutically is to write songs about them. But there are also songs in there about overcoming trauma and some slightly more hopeful stuff too. There are certainly some songs about being a piece of shit in there.

What personal experiences influenced the lyrics on the album?

It’s impossible right now to be plugged into the state of affairs in the world and not be affected by that as an artist. Both visual arts, cinema, music – it’s all the same. It’s all a coping mechanism or an escape, temporary albeit, or even a mood lifter. Songs are easy because they’re an emotion sort of trapped in a poem, something that you can revisit over and over again.

As a songwriter, you only have to make it once and then it’s available for everybody to listen to as much as they want. Everybody can have it. It’s not like a painting hanging on a wall. It’s an interesting art form. Even though I do it sort of more abstractedly, I think people can relate. A lot of times I meet people who will quote back lyrics of mine to me and take something completely different from the song than I actually meant, which is always thrilling to hear. Like somebody says it helps them through the death of a friend or depression or breakup or whatever.

Why did you decide to abandon traditional guitars and keyboards in favor of synth sound and sampler? And how does this album differ from your previous album?

Basically, like I said earlier, it was just a bit of a challenge and sort of a fun idea that we ran with. We’re at the point now as a band where we can kind of do the fuck we want. I think it keeps it interesting for our fans to not be super formulaic. Not that there’s anything wrong with people writing the same structure or using the same instrumentation. But for us, it keeps things exciting to move things around and see what we can come up with.

There’s a band, Deerhoof, I always respected because they would switch instruments all the time, which was a real lunacy to watch live. I loved it, seeing like the bass player playing drums and they would just rework their own songs into something that was commendable to me and bold and ambitious and funny and weird.

So anything like that to me is always exciting and it was easy to do. We’ve done this before, so it’s not super different from other records we’ve done, except for the fact that there’s just no guitar or keyboards. And the addition of a horn section sort of prominently on the record. It still sounds like an OCS record, but slightly different, which is always what we’re vying for.

How do you plan to bring the sound of the album to your live performances?

We’re actually working on that this week. I think we have three rehearsals coming up and we have some interesting ideas about how to make it work live. I don’t want to divulge that quite yet because I’m not 100 percent sure, but I’d rather not be playing the samplers live because they’re a pain in the ass. They’re cool, but they’re temperamental, and it’s just one more thing for me to carry. I already have enough gear. I have too much stuff that I bring on the road already. That being said, I think me and Thomas have figured out a pretty cool workaround that should be pretty fun live.

What’s your next project?

Right now, I just finished mixing OCS live, the first time me and Brigid ever did a duo. It’s just me and Brigid playing songs from over the past 27 years. We played a bunch of songs here at a small show around Christmas Time last year. We did a few nights and some charity events and we played songs that I’ve never played live before that I’d written from the 90s and all kinds of stuff. There were six tunings on the guitar. So it was, you know, it was fun and much like OCS always was a bit charmingly fucked up and ramshackle.

I’m mixing that, and I’m mixing a bunch of stuff that I’ve been backed up on – a lot of projects I have sitting around in the studio that are pretty much almost done. I have one record that I’ve been working on that I’m really excited about that I had to find a singer for. And I think that is starting to come to fruit with a singer that I found. So I’m working on that slowly. It’s going a little slow, but I should get my first taste of that in the next week or so as well.

Photos courtesy of John Dwyer
Osees’ Bandcamp

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others