January 18, 2008

Raz Ohara

Raz Ohara And The Odd Orchestra

4 / 10 Berlin songwriter Patrick Rasmussen is Raz Ohara. He excavates dreamscapes. Or he’d like to think he does, having made an album of lounge-soul that moves at the pace of EU bureaucracy. His is a voice creaking with intimate huskiness, so naturally he’s drawn comparisons to Jeff Buckley. A better marker might be Finley Quaye. Raz and his Orchestra do occasionally blunder on to the right path, as on the crystalline spy-jazz of ‘Kisses’, only to immediately make for the ditch, as on the bloated snooze soul of ‘One’. Sole Odd Orchestra member/producer Oliver Doerell adds twitching, sparse bleep-clusters and a sense of echo-laden sparseness to their production. However, their collaboration just comes off like Jamie Cullum trying to hang with the cool kids by decorating his jazz-lite with entirely ornamental electronics.

Gavin Haynes

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