The Bodies Obtained
Dead Plans
Biography 2009
Label: Finding You Attractive
Release Date: September 8, 2009
RIYL: The Knife, A Place To Bury Strangers, Fad Gadget
“is a giant dark cloud that encompasses everything from late-‘70’s post-punk to avant-garde electronics to industrial noir, somehow checking all those milestones without losing itself in any put-on nostalgia trips” – Aversion.com
“some stripped-back no wave courtesy of Suicide, and a slightly disconcerting, almost horror movie feel that would probably make Dario Argento feel right at home” - rocksellout.com
“listening to these guys is like listening to the Road Warrior soundtrack in a collision with the Blade Runner soundtrack mixed with a healthy dose of Suicide on tons of drugs. It’s crazy noisy jittery post punk that will rule your world” - PopStereo.blogspot.com
“have forged a unique world that isn’t for everyone, though a star gate for any fan of Eno, Throbbing Gristle, morbid fantasies, and the hours long after the sun goes down. Lay down your psychic noise” - ParasitesandSycophants.com
“like Vangelis Papathanassiou’s Blade Runner score and Tangerine Dream albums, TBO is a listening experience not unlike traveling through an alien landscape: strange and at times incredible” – Popwreckoning.com
“for anyone excited by minimal beats, broken synthesizers, digi-punk, or anything kind of atonal, The Bodies Obtained will be an amazing experience”. – Firstcoastnews.com
True, The Bodies Obtained are intellectually challenging, and you sense a level of composition skill that can take these recluses into the electronic music stratosphere. – Ink 19.com
After the underground success of The Bodies Obtained’s first album From the Top of My Tree, the Detroit, MI electro band have decided to release their second LP, Dead Plans. Like the first chapter in the TBO saga, which garnered considerable buzz in the experimental electronic blogosphere, Dead Plans is a variation on a theme: bands like Joy Division, Fad Gadget and visionaries like Brian Eno are all sound checked on the record. From the twisted, distorted vocals of songs like “The Perfect Plan” to the slightly demented stomp of album closer “Riding a Dead Plan”. The songs are invariably and deliciously bizarre, recalling the twisted stories of the Residents in a pop format. Timeless yet contemporary, Dead Plans is a perfect bride between the experimental scenes of the past 25 years and the noise-pop bands that are fast on the rise in America and the UK.
Like From the Top of My Tree, Dead Plans makes its case by breaking new ground again and again. It’s like dance music for broken robots, love songs for masochists, and test tube babies created by musical mad scientists. Even a ballad like “Walking on My Head” hits you like Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s being computed by HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey right before he gets his plug pulled. Dead Plans is one of those records that knows how to use its dead space as much as the music itself: each track is perforated with little silences that give it just the right amount of uneasiness. When TBO sing “Please don’t leave me alone/Not tonight” on the mid-album track “What’s Done is Done”, you believe the desperation.
The Bodies Obtained are still refraining from performing live, keeping the mystique of the enigmatic duo alive. Other than the music, it’s where the strength of the project lies: even when listening to Dead Plans, you’re never quite sure where the next turn is going to take you. Melding the best parts of experimental rock, electronica, prog and Krautrock, you quickly learn to expect the unexpected. Even refusing to be photographed (instead using images of what has become something of a mascot to the band, a man with a gnarled tree for a head), TBO’s only connection with their fans is through their music—a medium in which they have total control and orchestration. Their determination to their aesthetic really is something to behold, and maybe sometimes in the future they will divulge more to the world, but for now, Dead Plans, their newest opus, is as close as we’re going to get to their wicked genius.
Album Tracklisting:
1. Death From Above
2. Baby, It’s Not A Sin
3. She Wants What She Wants
4. The Perfect Plan
5. Nothing But This
6. Home Away From Home
7. Walking On My Head
8. What’s Done Is Done
9. Any Man Will Do
10. Riding A Dean Plan
Information please contact:
E: aj@thebodiesobtained.com
www.myspace.com/thebodiesobtained
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