Osees is the musical masterpiece of John Dwyer, with an intensive discography ranging from psychedelic rock, to punk, to the most recent synthesized works. Releasing over 28 albums, Osees has a mind-melting quality to any listener, new or old. Prior to the release of the most recent Osees album, “SORCS 80″, Jenison Brown on behalf of KCSU, got to talk with the man behind the music, John Dwyer.

Hey John, how’s it going?

John: Good, good, good. How are you?

Good, how was rehearsal?

John: F****** tedious. We’ve been working on the new album, so it’s been, uh, none of the old songs. And then we have a festival this weekend, so we’re learning the old songs after not playing them for a few months since our last tour. We took some time off and I realized how many of the songs I had forgotten. So thank god we had practice time.

The festival’s in Florida right?

John: Jacksonville, yeah.

It’s not usually a common stop for you guys, is it?

John: No, that’s why we’re flying in to do it. I like Florida, but we rarely get to play there. They’re a rambunctious crowd, you know.

So John, you’ve released 28 Osees albums, is there gonna be something special when it’s 30?

John: No, man. Everybody always tells me, and I’m so thankful that somebody’s keeping track of it because I never do…You’re probably very close or correct.

John: You’re young, and I don’t know if this is true for all people, but you get to a certain age and you stop caring about birthdays, or at least I do. I could give a s*** about my own birthday. I mean, it’s certainly an important thing, and you have to know how old you are, I guess. But as far as birthday parties go, I like a good birthday party, but the anniversaries and stuff don’t mean a lot to me. So as far as the 30th, no, there was nothing for the 20th. There’ll be nothing for the 30th, I don’t think. There’s no set limit. I always like people that take it all the way, like Lemmy from Motorhead, practically being dead on stage. Some of those.
That’s kind of how I imagine, like, I’ll probably be sitting in a chair if I get old enough on stage, and then they won’t even know I’m dead for a minute. They’ll be like, wait, is he okay? And they’re like, oh my God, he’s dead. I’ve just been sitting there slumped over on stage.

With such a diversified discography, how do you change your approach and headspace for different album styles? For example, how was your approach different when making something like “Face Stabber” vs. “Intercepted message”? Or is it the same?

John: Those two are good examples of having sort of a set idea going in. Sometimes we would just play and go with whatever stuck, you know, and obviously what I was listening to at the time would play into the direction a little bit. But sometimes we go in with nothing and just sort of wing it. Yeah. And you know, with those more eclectic records, I’d say lately we’ve been sort of heading in more directional, you know, directions for a lack of a better vocabulary on my end.

With intercepted message, there was more of a verse-chorus pop-song like structure, which isn’t as prevalent on your many other records. Do you feel that purposefully sticking to a particular structure is freeing because you’re able to lock into the same structure?

John: I just wanted to write like a poppy synth pop record. But it’s still got some variety in there, you know, and my scope is always pretty wide width and it’s like a wide brush that we’re painting with. And it’s like, I remember I got asked a lot back in the day, like, what is psychedelic music? And I’d be like, anything that sounds good while you’re high, as far as I’m concerned. And that is almost all music, you know? So sometimes we’ll jam and take for instance, “Face Stabber” was one that was written from a lot of improvisation. We would just play and play and play and play for like a month or two and record everything. And then I would cut it all down into pieces, and then we’d go back in and play and play again with those sort of slight edits, slight edits, until we had them down to, you know, manageable pieces of songs, three minutes to like 20 minutes sometimes, depending on what we’re working with, you know, as I said, that was much more bloated than intercepted message.

Can you give us a hint of what’s coming with the next album?

John: Well style-wise, the new one is pretty ambitious. We’ve been working hard on it. I’m pretty happy with it.

This September 11th, Osees will be playing the Ogden Theatre in Denver. Looking to get your brain rocked? Osees at the Ogden is the place to be.