Influences: Oscar Lang
A brace of stereo favourites from the songwriter...
It's hard to pin *Oscar Lang* down.
He moves quickly, for a start, with a flurry of singles and EPs already peppering his catalogue.
But it's more than that. New release 'Hand Over Your Head' moves from psych pop fantasy through to indie confessional, and it's often hard to tell where one ends, and the other begins.
Out now, the EP blurs the lines still further, with his innate melodic touch shrouded in a series of masks.
So, Clash asks: will the real Oscar Lang please stand up?
Luckily for us - and also for you - he smuggled a few stereo picks our way, to further illuminate the situation.
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*Beck - 'Devil's Haircut'*
I was never that into 90s music but I fell in love with this record and all of Beck's old stuff before we recorded this EP.
When we went in to record the first track ‘Apple Juice’, we wanted to write something that had a 'Beck-y' feel. I think because of my edgy 14 year-old 'I hate everything and everyone' phase, I’ve always had a love for grunge and grunge chords.
So it was about combining those grungy chords with a Beck style breakbeat.
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*Blur - 'Lonesome Street'*
Back in 2015 I loved this record, but I feel like I didn’t really appreciate it at the time. But I ended up revisiting it this year and remembered why I loved it so much. I’d say this is one of the biggest influences on the EP, I just loved all the little interesting sounds and samples.
We ended up doing something similar to this track and added a little radio sound effect over the whole ep, which was essentially just me going through each track and chatting shit haha!
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*Babe Rainbow - 'Sunflower Sutra'*
Babe Rainbow was one of the first bands that got me into 60/70s psychedelic music. I saw them play at The Garage in London and I remember it felt like being transported to a different time.
After that concert I got heavily into old music and it became a huge influence on my music, influencing tracks like 'Drinking Wine'. I think secretly when I wrote that tune I just wanted something that could live up to the coolness of a Babe Rainbow song.
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*De Staat - 'Round'*
Oh boi the riff on this one gets me gassed every time. Remembered this band from a song they had on FIFA in like 2014 and ended up diving into their catalogue.
I always wanted to write a song with a memorable riff and so ended up writing ‘I Feel Good’ inspired by tracks like this. We’ve been playing 'I Feel Good' for years now and it always went off when we played the little descending riff.
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*Ariel Pink - 'Dayzed Inn Daydreams'*
I’ve always loved Ariel Pink, his music kind of gives me medieval music vibes and I’m not gonna lie I would always bop with the tunes on school visits to Hampton Court. So I’m a big fan of his.
I’d say the dreamyness of this track is what I wanted to replicate for ‘Velvet Dreams’, I wanted to have a big grandiose ending with long reverbs and big sounds.
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'Hand Over Your Head' EP is out now on Dirty Hit.
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