Hello Ocho has Slippery Fingers

By: Stephen Wilkins

Originally published September 14, 2016, by Plasma Magazine 

Hello Ocho's second LP In Portuguese

Hello Ocho has yet to disappoint. They bring together dark sensual grooves, sped up indie guitar rock riffs and psychedelic psychodrama all into one musical cauldron. It’s like if Phish was better at taking drugs and David Byrne had a psychedelic youth serum that kept him in 1983. Ocho released their second full length record this year, In Portuguese, which has solidified them as not just a band that can deliver live but also in the studio. This latest release is the culmination of the band “dating around”, said lead singer and guitarist Chris Yonkers, for the past two years. Ocho set out to get people on their feet and dancing but with this second record they wanted to push their musicianship to new areas. They have always had the ability to get people on the dance floor but In Portuguese is sonically and musically experimentative which demands multiple listenings preferably with headphones.   

Drawing by Lauren Barfield

The other special gift the Ocho boys have released, for your listening pleasure, is The Slippery Hand EP. It is a trip down the rabbit hole. It’s what you get when you stick five musicians in a studio with head full of magic nomnoms and leave them to their own devices. Needless to say it gets weird. It’s a head trip with no map and a cosmic captain that catapults you to the stars. “Hurtling through the cosmos like a psychedelic freighter with little regard for traditional song and genre forms”, as their bandcamp is proclaims sums up this EP. Bass player Clinton Callahan told me they booked a five day studio session, miked the entire room, set up all the instruments and just went crazy. They later on set down pieced together what is now one of the strangest yet still cohesive pieces of music I’ve heard out of the Atlanta scene. You probably won’t be hearing many of the tracks live so get the EP while you can.