There are lots of reasons why people make music remotely, ranging from the sheer logistics of getting everyone into the same room, to the cost, or simply that the whole thing is just more productive when they’re thousands of miles away from each other.
In the case of Oya Paya however things are a little more 2023 in nature. Bassist Saam Jafarzadeh and drummer Ashwin Menon were once schoolmates in Singapore before they ended up as students at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, where they met drummer to be Maxime McGowan.
Self-identifying as “a smelly group of twenty-somethings making spicy music,” despite the appearance over time of a couple of EP’s – the last of which was 2021’s Connect – the trio having first been pandemically separated were then stunned as McGowan was refused permission to work in the UK, a triumph for the kind of petty bureaucracy which has become one of the nation’s few post referendum specialisms.
Undeterred the threesome set about making a file swapping album that would possess the energy of their famously energetic adopted hometown gigs. With the implicit knowledge that where you make your noise is not always the same place that it comes from, Slumped Up is essentially a bottling of their shared paths as opposed to three guys laying down their respective parts here, in France and Singapore.
If it sounds like it was difficult to make a coherent record as a result, worry not. The dozen tracks here are as threaded as any takes grabbed from a live room, although the group’s refusal to conform to one style or another is something that listeners need getting acquainted to if you’re new around here.
Predominantly though the tone dips in and out of various tranches of nineties indie rock, with the likes of Pavement and Beck as touchstones. Opener In Pieces necks the formula but adds a neo-psychedelic twist, a march in amongst the Yellow Submarines, but track sequencing (Or maybe putting stuff at random) gives the impression of material in batches of moods.
Bear with. The downtempo segment (To these ears) consists of the grungy 5th September and Manoeuvre’s twisted vocal paired with claustrophobic lo-fi beats, whilst sandwiched in the middle Second Best’s considered, thoughtful indie sounds like the weight of the disparate world has come to land heavily on their collective shoulders.
Does energy dissipate in amongst the zeroes and ones then? Not at all. Maybe fired up by circumstances, Operator is a familiar-but-in-your-face dose of spike laden pop-punk – and with their inner Blink-182 satisfied, Don’t Ask is a shout out for all of those duvet surfers who’re never up before Bargain Hunt and Focus lounges round a bang on Graham Coxon riff, wiv out the Parklife, innit.
There’s time however for another reassuringly big diversion. As the ending nears Help Me Understand dredges around the hippier end of clean-shaven rock, whilst closer Slow Slug throws a little of everything – a stray break, nigglingly good guitar, astral keys – into a melting pot which shows that shit can be overcome and the results can still be way uplifting. Against those odds, Slumped Up isn’t the sound of a thousand out of office replies all turned into noise. On it the Oya Paya three are freed at last; with everything of them inside it, they hope it finds you well.
The Voice Of Unreason 