Weekend Saviour by O$VMV$M

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For the full background info + video
(A collaboration between Jasmin Butt & Sam Barrett) please check this link:
https://tape-echo.com/news/osvmvsm-weekend-saviour/
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Pretty much exactly six years ago Memoryz Ov U was released on tape via NoCorner –
this release marked the first manifestation of what has since become an ongoing, not just musical but also visual, series of collaborations between Young Echo members Sam Barrett and Amos Childs.
Over the years, the two have released three LPs and a single for Bristol’s Idle Hands label, produced two albums for rapper Manonmars on Young Echo Records, and they have worked with Rider Shafique on a 7” for LAVALAVA Records, as well as putting forward the first record on their new Dollar Discs imprint.

Most of these releases (including their very first, for NoCorner) include representations of their collaborative visual style, which is based on making new narratives out of sourced material taken from old magazines, photo books, newspapers or whatever else they get their hands on.
These artworks were partly born out of necessity, as they were appointed to make the posters for the Young Echo Sound nights in Bristol for many years. Locals will have seen these on walls around town, everyone else should check the ‘Heavyweight Champion’ book that was put out via our Mechanical Reproductions label recently.

Effectively, their visual approach is not dissimilar from the way they make music – it’s a skewed reinterpretation of the sonics they accumulate, wether video game fx, youtube rips, cassette loops, re-pitched horror soundtracks, or yes, why the hell not – cuckoo clocks, bird sounds, and gunshots.
Anything goes in the world of O$VMV$M. Through mangled media, and with a chop & screw mentality, they open a portal into their very own weird world where a solemn slow dance is in sweet harmony with a smiling screwface.

Six years on, O$VMV$M mark the return to NoCorner for their first 12” on the label, with a six tracker entitled Weekend Saviour.
Musically, the record traverses that noir-ish, bass-centric atmosphere of their early output with the first three cuts, before switching up into an oddball dancehall trajectory on Side B, all whilst playfully hinting at a paradoxical world where nothing can be taken too seriously and fun must be had in order to maintain some sanity.
The final track, ‘Codzilla Outro’ is not really an Outro as such, it feels like the start of the best film you’ve never seen – or heard. Or maybe the film was called Weekend Saviour and you’ve just watched it? Either way, the imagery is definitely strong with this music, even with eyes closed.

To provide more proof of how strong the connection between sound and image is with this project, we’ll mention the artwork and video process that frame the music here.
The video, which was created by fellow Young Echo member / experimental multi-media artist Jasmin Butt (aka ‘guest’ / singer of Jabu) uses filmed and re-projected imagery of a series of Sam Barrett’s paintings.
The dancing shadow figures sway around their own axis in a way that mirrors the strange mystique of the music. Retained in the brittle flicker of the 16mm film that was used to obscure, as much as represent the original forms that they capture, is the spirit of O$VMVSM’s musical approach, reflected in Jasmin’s own analogue explorations.

The results and offshoots of this video project then laid the foundations for the record sleeve design, and it was then decided that the gold dust of extra imagery that would otherwise have been locked away in a circular metal case somewhere, needed to be revealed in the form of a zine, to go along with the record.
Designed and laid out by Studio Tape-Echo along with the sleeve art, the zine documents a series of stills from the re-filming process, capturing Sam’s canvas-escaping paintings and their interactions with Jasmin’s 16mm reels.