Endless experiments
The Octopus Project embrace mistakes with eight arms
PROFILE. Indietronica outfit The Octopus Project fully embrace screwups. When they throw everything but the kitchen sink into their recordings and — not to let fans down — their live shows, glitches are bound to happen.
“Oh, yeah, we improvise,” drummer/guitarist/bassist Toto Miranda says. “A sample doesn’t get triggered or a string breaks or something gets unplugged all the time, and you just have to roll with it. But the more things happen, the more experienced and creative we’re getting with working around it and keeping the show going.”
So when the amp next to the band’s trademark Theremin goes out and someone needs to fix it ASAP, a totally unintentional, alien-sounding “wooo!” may prominently make its way into the song (the Theremin is played by manipulating the electric field within its proximity.) By the next night’s show, that inadvertent pitch may have become a permanent addition to the set.
“On this tour, our songs are definitely acquiring extra little twists as we play them out,” Miranda says over the phone in a van headed to D.C. The group is performing nationally before their third full-length album, “Hello, Avalanche,” hits stores Oct. 9. “Something just feels right, so somebody will add a little something. As we get more familiar with what makes a song tick, we play up those aspects.”
While endless experimentation could be the demise of such an overly adventurous band, The Octopus Project (also featuring husband-wife team Josh Lambert on guitar, bass and keys; Yvonne Lambert on Theremin, samplers, keys, glockenspiel and guitar; and new addition, guitarist Ryan Figg) don’t view their songs as too precious to document with finite endings. “A lot of the time, we have to leave well enough alone [with the music],” Miranda says. “We put so much work into recording, and it has to be finished eventually. We’ll say, ‘Well, that’s fine,’ but then almost always when we go back and listen to it we think, ‘Oh! That was pretty good.’”
The indie rock blogeratti seem to agree. A new favorite at Coachella and SXSW, The Octopus Project are making just as much noise with their fierce onstage antics — including passing out 1,000 balloons and projecting bizarre video footage of monkeys on various screens — as with their whimsical, loud music (glorious goofs and all).
“Sometimes, we have specific ideas for performances worked out ahead of time that need props and supplies,” Miranda says, forewarning of “glowing speaker ghosts” at upcoming shows. “We usually try to introduce some deliberate extra elements, but then a lot of times stuff just kind of happens.”
The Octopus Project
Saturday, 9 p.m.
The Middle East Downstairs
480 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
MBTA: Red Line to Central
$15, 617-864-EAST
www.mideastclub.com