Search - Odd Nosdam :: Level Live Wires

An Odd Nosdam record is more than music. More and more, David P. Madson's albums are collections of wordless short stories and scenes, intricately woven audio scrapbooks that buzz with singular experience as lived through the eyes and ears of one very electric human conduit. 2005's threateningly dense and gorgeous Burner was built amongst bad relationships, nasty headspaces and East Oakland situations, but Level Live Wires is the distinct product of inspiration, bizarre happenstance and wonder, lived out in a series of bright moments eventually brought together under the roof of an unruffled West Berkeley cottage. 8-track cassettes, samplers, synths and Dictaphones, lost records and found sounds, field recordings and happy accidents are brought to stirring life by our humble collagist. Nosdam's fascination with these odd moments gives Level Live Wires its enveloping draw. Each bit that becomes a part of a song is an otherwise static and eventually staid sound that could have become mere memory. Instead, he takes each into his life (often burning sounds onto disc and listening to them throughout his day), and gives them blood in return. This fully-realized work includes contributions by a number of Madson's co-conspirators: Dee Kesler of Thee More Shallows, Why's Doug McDiarmid and Yoni Wolf, Chris Adams (Hood, Bracken), Jessica Bailiff, Cosmos Lee, Tunde Adebimpe (TV On The Radio), and more. Also included with Level Live Wires' first CD pressing is a limited bonus CD of isolated sonics--a fine ambient EP in its own right--that allows listeners to hear the album's underpinnings from Odd Nosdam's peerless perspective.