Odeama Interviews

An interview with ourselves appeared in the September 1998 Bearos Records newsletter. It was set-up by The Doc at Bearos & held at The Flapper:

Oedeama (sic) is Ade and Martin, formerly of Stray Dog City. They have recently been joined by Martin's brother, Steve (Lee!), on percussion. Ade and Martin have been together since 1996 and have produced over 70 hours of taped material. Odeama sees a marked change of attitude and a slight change in direction.

Ade Stray Dog City was a learning experience. At a certain point you reach a level where you can apply what you've learnt to a better end, and that's what were doing with Odeama. We're concentrating more into less time. Before we'd just wander off with only the vague gist of an idea whereas now we've got the ideas and can pack them into a certain amount of time.

Martin Squeezing all those tapes into a 35 minute set!

Ade We started with a healthy interest in post-punk bands like PiL and the Cocteau Twins and then branched off into some of the experimental stuff you read about in The Wire. It's not a fantastic array of more modern influences, people often mention certain experimental bands to us and we just end up looking confused.

Martin We're not from Birmingham, though people here have taken an interest and have done us some favours. As far as music is concerned we just do what comes naturally. It would not occur to us to compromise or plagerise. A lot of bands, as good as they are, it's so obvious where they're coming from.

Ade A lot of our stuff is improvised. It's amorphous. We just do it and that's it. If it's any good we improve on it, if it's no good we don't bother.

Martin You decide what you're good at, where your strengths are. Some bands fall down between what they want to do and what they're good at. Often they're completely different things! A lot of our music starts with samples. We don't sample from records as a rule, we don't need to with our backcatalogue to use. You can take the best moment and use that as a starting point, building on it, a kind of progression. We're really into the idea of accidents because we don't want it to be just like listening to a record. You want it to be an experience.

Ade It's all about events, and [how] they can change.

Martin It's about fleshing it out but also can be about stripping it down. A lot of what we do is quite minimal, if the bass-line is good then let that be the focus, don't embellish it unnecessarily.

Ade Basically the Midlands has knocked up a good few bands (Scorn and Godflesh are mentioned). We're good at extreme and diverse music but it's never nice enough to get a mass market.

Martin The first gig we ever did (as SDC) was at this Rock cafe back in Stourbridge. We played with Bloodbath Picnic Heroine (sic) and this really heavy thrash band. The bar staff threatened to quit if any of the bands were ever booked there again!

Ade The audience put up with us though, even though most were death-metal fans. We were expecting trouble, there were some really scary people at the bar!

Martin Everybody still talks about that gig!