Similar Albums:
Through the Belly of the Sea: A Choose Your Own Adventure Album,
Captain Is Dead, Let the Drum Corpse Dance,
Harmony of the Spheres,
Live From a Shark's Cage,
Don't Wake Me Up,
Dream in Sound,
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,
Second Time Around,
Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle,
Mellow Gold
- Artist: The Olivia Tremor Control
- Rating:
- Release Date: 1999
- Genre: Rock
Review
If the preceding Dusk at Cubist Castle was the Olivia Tremor Control's very own White Album, then the labyrinthine Black Foliage is their SMiLE -- it's an imploding masterpiece, a work teetering on the cliff's edge between genius and madness. Torn at the seams between pop transcendence and noise radicalism, the group attempts to have it both ways, meaning teenage symphonies to God like "A New Day" rest uneasily alongside musique concrète-styled tape pastiches such as "Combinations" (which, along with the similarly styled, multi-part title track, is one of the many sonic motifs snaking its way throughout the record). There are at least enough ideas for five albums here, which is both Black Foliage's strength and its weakness -- it's impossible not to get lost inside of the OTC's swirling schizophrenia, and too often snatches of brilliance flash by too quickly to savor the moment. Moreover, with songs like "California Demise 3" continuing the oblique narrative running through previous OTC records, the artistic statement the record is making (and there undoubtedly is one) is impenetrable at best. Still, with each of the band's successive releases seeming like just part of a much bigger picture only now beginning to come into focus, maybe that's the point. Ultimately, Black Foliage just might be an end-of-the-millennium appeal that speaks directly and solely to the unconscious. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music GuideTracks
| Track Title | Composers | Performers | Time |
| Opening | The Olivia Tremor Control | (0:25) | |
| A Peculiar Noise Called "Train Director" | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:02) | |
| Combinations | The Olivia Tremor Control | (0:04) | |
| Hideaway | The Olivia Tremor Control | (2:34) | |
| Black Foliage (Animation 1) | The Olivia Tremor Control | (1:11) | |
| Combinations | The Olivia Tremor Control | (0:14) | |
| The Sky Is a Harpsichord Canvas | The Olivia Tremor Control | (0:04) | |
| A Sleepy Company | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:40) | |
| Grass Canons | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:21) | |
| A New Day | The Olivia Tremor Control | (2:29) | |
| Combinations | The Olivia Tremor Control | (0:15) | |
| Black Foliage (Animation 2) | The Olivia Tremor Control | (1:23) | |
| I Have Been Floated | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:39) | |
| Paranormal Echoes | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:30) | |
| Black Foliage (Animation 3) | The Olivia Tremor Control | (0:44) | |
| A Place We Have Been To | The Olivia Tremor Control | (2:25) | |
| Black Foliage (Itself) | The Olivia Tremor Control | (2:54) | |
| The Sylvan Screen | The Olivia Tremor Control | (6:07) | |
| The Bark and Below It | The Olivia Tremor Control | (11:24) | |
| Black Foliage (Animation 4) | The Olivia Tremor Control | (1:36) | |
| California Demise 3 | The Olivia Tremor Control | (2:46) | |
| Looking for Quiet Seeds | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:13) | |
| Combinations | The Olivia Tremor Control | (0:11) | |
| Mystery | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:25) | |
| Another Set of Bees in the Museum | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:07) | |
| Black Foliage (Animation 5) | The Olivia Tremor Control | (2:08) | |
| Hilltop Procession (Momentum Gaining) | The Olivia Tremor Control | (3:21) |
