Hello. I'm the Ominous Pigeon Master, and I'm here today to talk about the O.P.M.B.


The O.P.M.B, standing for the Obscure _PArtist _MAssociation Boredroom is something I didn't literally just make up while making this post an important discussion board I'm going to forget about tomorrow, that will try and help resolve a serious problem I've been seeing now for quite some problem:
Artists who are completely unknown, and deserve more attention.

I think a fair few of us know a musical artist or band, that is so unknown, that literally 20, 30 people around the world might know their name.

The thought's been rolling in my brain for awhile; I've been listening to a guy called Raptor Koch for a few years now. Guy is amazing, has some beautifully wild proggy yet accessible albums, full of personality and great musicianship.
It doesn't seem like anyone knows about the fellow though, which is such a shame!

So I wanna give as big an up as I can by recommending anyone to listen through some of his albums.

His most recent body of work is the Druhý album.
https://raptorkoch.bandcamp.com/album/druh-album
Aside from that one, I would listen to the Prvý album and Ezoterik Pank. He's made a lot of stuff, but I think those 3 are amongst his most accessible projects.

If you want just 3 minutes to see whether you'd enjoy his stuff, I'd check out the music video he released for the song Zuza.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA7cdv20YEA

Even just one other person knowing this guy exists would make me feel more sane. x)

And since the subject of obscure artists, and bands that deserve more attention is the topic, I'm sure other folk on here have their own suggestions they'd like to make.

How obscure enough a band or artist has to be, to be mentioned here, I dunno. x) From what I can see, Raptor is lucky when he breaks through 100 listeners, so I was thinking extremely unknown.

Their is a level of irony to this discussion, when lots of us are obscure songwriters ourselves heh, but all the more reason for us to appreciate unknown talent, I think. : )

I'd recommend anyone who does make a suggestion, we focus on 1 artist or band per message, and maybe try and find a 3-4 minute piece of music, as a taster for anyone curious about them.

Shnabubula
https://youtu.be/8fVyEgdTYIU

Tony Lemans was a promising bubblegum-pop artist who only released 1 album and passed away prematurely at 29 a few years later.

Here's the seventh song of his album

. This link is also a playlist of the other songs, which aren't available anywhere else afaik.

carlos

, one of the best tracker jazz artist of all time

Flurries is a cool but incredibly obscure rock band. I was the first person to ever listen to one of their songs on Spotify (found it using Forgotify). This is one of my favorite songs from them but it only has 8 views: Things We Own

Not sure if he meets your threshold for obscurity, but I think the electronic producer Nixtrove

deserves to be way better known.

He releases a ton of consistently excellent music. I'd call his style Autechre-adjacent (an easy path to my heart), but unique. He's a master of combining erratic beats and subtly beautiful pads.

My favorite track of his -- and one of my favorite tracks, period -- is "webtrap"

.

Capsule

is a thrash band that unfortunately shares a name with a j-pop outfit that sounds nothing like them. (which is also good don't get me wrong.) All three of their records are amazing, I've been listening to them since around when Capsule Plus released and still take a lot of inspiration from them.

Macrosick

only ever put out one demo and did a few shows. Finding their release DEMODISK again was a lot harder than I remember it being when I was like 10. I could take or leave the rest but "Under These Skies" and "Nothing's On The Radio" are formative masterpieces to me.

I'm not sure how obscure Pezz

really is considering they went on to find some relatively mainstream success as "Billy Talent," which is also good but I like the sorta-jazzy early stuff best. All of "Watoosh!" is great but "Nita" is a goofy banger, and I wish I could live in a parallel universe where it was played to death on FM radio.

Zechs Marquise

probably isn't that obscure either I just wanted to brag about getting to see them live

maudlin of the Well

are criminally underappreciated genre-benders, most of whom went on as Kayo Dot. Their twin 2001 albums "Bath" and "Leaving Your Body Map" wander between jazz, progressive rock, death metal and contemporary classical music in a way that I can only describe as "it makes me feel like I'm in a dark fantasy novel that was written in like the 70s or something."

There's stuff I've squirreled away since like 2010 that never even hit bandcamp or soundcloud but i feel like i'm not even supposed to talk about it. The guy i got it from never wanted any of it released and I'm not going to go against his wishes so I guess all I get to do is say "I know some really good rare-ass music that should have blown up in its time" which makes me feel crazy but oh well. "Say la V" as they say in france. If i remember any more rarities that I can share i'll probably edit this post

probably my favorite "hidden gem" since they came out with their first album in 2008 is an old indie group named Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground - the core was just 2 guys (both first initial K, hence the name) doing guitars, keys, drums, and vocals; but they had a rotating collective cast of many extra instrumentalists (horns, strings, etc) who really gave the music a lot of personality. it's like... chamber psychedelia. extremely stoned indie pop music "sponsored by fresh herbs n' lovemaking" (their words). a cabaret or circus show. i feel like i could compare them to the beatles in terms of arranging but the vibe is different too.

they had two albums, one self titled in 2008 and another almost self titled ("Introducing...") in 2011, and both are of equally stellar quality imo. a third was in the works, written and just needed recording, but sadly the band split as their keyboardist went on to go play for Portugal. The Man, and you know how that ended, those guys blew the fuck up. (the other main dude still makes music as Real Don Music.)

if i had to pick one song it would be the first proper track on their initial self-titled album, "Hey Momma

", which is also by far their most popular one. look at that, 13K views on this 8 year old official upload. they really didn't write a bad song though, so if you dig it, that account should have all of both albums for your listening pleasure.

i'm grateful i got to see them once when they toured with damien jurado; they were nice people and somewhere there exists a photo of me with them. but man i seriously still wish they'd stayed together, their work was so fresh and unique and exactly in line with what i wanted to hear. i still listen to them regularly and feel like i know every word and part of every song 12-15 years later. i ought to do some covers someday

@kalii i feel you on the last one; it's hard to discover someone who was and probably still is super-talented, but isn't interested in pursuing it anymore, you almost really *want* to share it because what if it finally did get the attention it deserves and this person realises the value of this amazing art they made at a time in their life (and maybe they'd even be inspred to do more), but even knowing about that part of their life is something they've trusted you with and you have to respect that.

I saw viraxor mention carlos and I must thereby mention the (imo) superior strobo

this is a declaration of war to find best jazztracker

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_profile&query=85765

@02FD: what's a best jazztracker competition without norfair

?

you have impressed me this sounds like if metroid was jazz

check out cyberfantasy by kawwmander on yt / bandcamp real good techno/ darksynthwave