We Are Dust: OYAARSS
“Smaida Greizi Nākamība”
Review + Stream

Are you scared of heights? Are you claustrophobic and handle narrow, dark and tight spaces poorly? Agoraphobic maybe and get creeped out by vast open spaces? Are you afraid of the dark? Do you suffer from anxiety, vertigo, or loss of orientation and or sensory perception? Are you scared of the unknown? Does existence it self at times overwhelm you? Yes to any or all of the above? Then stay the fuck away from this album. Seriously, hit play at your own risk. Close your eyes and let the roller coaster begin, and keep in mind all the aforementioned warnings. This is electronic music which is not for the faint of heart or for those who still suffer from acid flash backs or post-traumatic stress. Oyaarss is a musical project originally from Latvia and now based in Berlin, and masterminded by Arvīds Laivinieks, that will grab you by the hair, force you into complete submission and then drag you by the ankles into a dystopic and frightening world all of its own with absolutely pulverizing force. What this man has accomplished in the only two records to his name thus far is staggering and incomprehensible and leaves us to wonder where this musical journey of his is headed. Definitely towards the future and to the forefront of musical achievements, to new standards of musical composition, and surely towards the most scorching and frightening unknown.

States Laivinieks’ official bio: “Oyaarss is the solo project of Latvian-raised Arvids Laivinieks. The fruit of his passion for intelligent but crushing metal, experimental electronic music and dystopian worlds, this project marries touching, poignant melodies and sheer industrial weight.” So be warned mortals… That said, “Smaida Greizi Nākamība” is Laivinieks’ second album, and while it continues down the same path of the oppressive, hallucinating and completely warped sonic sculpture of it’s predecessor (“Bads”, released earlier in 2012), it also breaks new ground in the field of experimental electronic music and just pushes the envelope of digital composition in general towards new depths of madness. Laivinieks’ soundscapes are frightening and titanic, and they morph and swirl like hordes of otherworldly tentacles rupturing the earth’s crust from depths unknown, reaching out from the ocean floor towards the heavens and breaking into our world with the force and presence of a cataclysm. His beats are monstrous, tortured and pounding slabs of cosmic debris, aggregated into gigantic swirling clusters of dark matter and then crashed on our heads from the uttermost depths of the cosmos like a gigantic meteor shower, who’s impact is annihilating, unstoppable and completely disintegrating. Moments of calm and mesmerizing beauty laid down by ethereal  and almost shoegazy washes of keyboards and strings break the havoc from time to time creating puzzling meadows of lulling trance. Safe harbors of dusty and glittering psychedelia that create almost a sense of stasis where space and time seem frozen, allowing us to a get a glimpse of the destruction all around us, before everything then starts to collapse, boil and crumble once again under the sheer force of Laivinieks’ monstrous beats and scorching swarms of annihilating post-industrial unstoppable noise. While all the industrial and noise freaks and all the fans of Lustmord, Apehx Twin, Amon Tobin, Boards Of Canada, Coil, Fennesz and Justin Broadrick and so on will absolutely end up enslaved by Laivinieks’ frightening work, also those who enjoy the darker sides of techno, EMB, EDM, glitch, dub and breakbeat will find this work fascinating as well. Overall we’re just thankful Laivinieks does what he does t all, so we get the chance to take a peek into an incredible, frightening, bent and completely warped parallel world he opened a portal to and that we had no idea even existed. Call it what you will, we’ll simply call the music of Oyaarss fucking awesome.