My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (2023)
My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (2023)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+log+.cue) - 245 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 89 Mb | 00:38:40
Psychedelic Rock, Post-Punk, Experimental Rock | Label: Drongo Records
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+log+.cue) - 245 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 89 Mb | 00:38:40
Psychedelic Rock, Post-Punk, Experimental Rock | Label: Drongo Records
Bristol-based experimental psych-rock group My Octopus Mind are pleased to reveal their third studio album ‘Trying To Be Normal’, released today, November 3rd 2023, to vinyl via Drongo Records. My Octopus Mind are a high-energy experimental psych-rock four-piece comprised of drums, guitar, vocals and heavily effected double bass. Since their conception in 2017, the band have developed a wild form of experimental rock, taking a tongue in cheek ride through post-punk swagger and dysfunction, wonky riffs, balkan rhythms and moments of haunting grace.Tracklist:
2019 saw the release of their spectacular debut album Maladyne Cave, swiftly followed up by 2020’s Faulty At Source, championed by the likes of Prog, RTE, Loudwire, Beats Per Minute and Noods Radio. The band have supported the likes of Henge, CLT DRP, The Guru Guru and St Pierre Snake Invasion, they’ve toured extensively throughout Europe and have secured slots at Shambala, ArcTanGent and Secret Garden Party.
Their third studio album Trying To Be Normal was written socially distanced over the course of 2020 and 2021 in a 1920’s theater and recorded over 5 days with Jake Bright at Giant Wafer Studios in rural Wales with mastering from Shawn Joseph at Optimum Mastering (J Dilla, Portishead). Due to multiple lockdowns there was no pressure to gig, affording team Octopus the time and creative freedom to focus solely on the album, which took shape organically through epic (up to 12 hour) jam sessions. It’s a playful collection of fresh post-pandemic material that marks a turning point in the band’s sound. It’s powerful, silly and immediately danceable.
“I came up with the title after a tongue in cheek discussion about making the structures of our songs a bit more approachable. Three or four minute bangers sort of thing. We maybe managed two. Things got out of hand, but the title is still true. We tried”, jokes drummer Oli Cocup.
The album comprises of short, sweet, hard hitting rock bangers, some slightly longer, condensed slabs of prog and post punk, with a cheeky ballad thrown in for good measure featuring vocals from Sang Froid’s Aisling Whiting.
Lyrically Trying To Be Normal deals with a lot of heavy subjects; heartbreak, the male identity fusing itself with FEM and rage at rape culture. It’s not without its lighter moments though with nonsensical roleplay as gamblers (High Rollers), thugs (Sabretooth Monkey) and completely inaccurate celebrity critique (Minor Celebrities).
Discussing the creation of the album, the band state: “We spent many years making highly tangential, cerebral music. Soundscapes, non-linear song structures, non-repeating metre sequences. This is our best effort to calm down and hide all that cool indulgent stuff in the margins of the earworms. The writing and recording process was much more collaborative and spontaneous, arising from jams that were recorded and then pulled apart for songs to emerge.
With the pandemic unfolding around us, and as the world appeared to be collapsing, it seemed that we were compelled to make music to escape that reality rather than critique it, as we have done with past albums. It’s like things got so bad that irony was no longer appropriate. We just wanted to play around and have fun instead. It’s hilarious that this is us trying to be normal and completely failing.”
With first glimpses of the new record already being championed by the likes of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon, Total Rock, RTE, Noizze, The Most Radicalist and BBC Radio Bristol, Trying To Be Normal is turning heads with a sexy swagger and awkward disrespect for the norms of rock, made by a group of neurodiverse musicians incapable of behaving normally. It’s a place for subconscious expression of chaos, and is a cathartic escape from the anxiety and boredom of lockdown and the alienation of solitude.
Ahead of the release of the album came its third single Sabretooth Monkey, released on September 27th 2023, a song so lyrically bizarre, no synopsis could do it justice.
Discussing the chaos of the track the band very seriously explain: “This is a serious song and it needs to be taken seriously. The demystification of art by explaining the art will now be explained by the art. We think you the listener should befriend a llama, buy a motorbike and take to the open road, drink diesel for breakfast, and headbutt a seagull. I’m a Sabretooth Monkay baby now get your hands off my stash. Also the bassline is fire and the guitar solo is some classic atonal chaos through the Cherry Box fuzz by Lollygagger. shout out to that wizard.”
1. Made Outta Gold (04:18)
2. High Roller (02:54)
3. Maiden Of Honour (04:01)
4. Made Out Of Lies (04:53)
5. Converse Conserve (01:38)
6. Draining The Swamp (04:28)
7. Moving Slow (03:23)
8. Minor Celebrities (05:28)
9. Wandering Alone (05:06)
10. Sabretooth Monkey (02:31)
Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011
EAC extraction logfile from 19. October 2023, 9:11
My Octopus Mind / Trying To Be Normal
Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GT70N Adapter: 0 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 103
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 4:18.04 | 0 | 19353
2 | 4:18.04 | 2:54.10 | 19354 | 32413
3 | 7:12.14 | 4:00.39 | 32414 | 50452
4 | 11:12.53 | 4:53.08 | 50453 | 72435
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8 | 25:35.09 | 5:28.13 | 115134 | 139746
9 | 31:03.22 | 5:06.03 | 139747 | 162699
10 | 36:09.25 | 2:31.06 | 162700 | 174030
Track 1
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\01 Made Outta Gold.wav
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Track not present in AccurateRip database
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Track 2
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\02 High Roller.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 3
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\03 Maiden Of Honour.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 4
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\04 Made Out Of Lies.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.9 X
Track quality 99.9 %
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Track 5
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\05 Converse Conserve.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.8 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 6
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\06 Draining The Swamp.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 3.5 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 7
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\07 Moving Slow.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 3.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 8
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\08 Minor Celebrities.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 4.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 9
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\09 Wandering Alone.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 10
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\10 Sabretooth Monkey.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 1.7 X
Track quality 99.9 %
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End of status report
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[CTDB TOCID: G2Sh1vnZhAwIimVgGtBBxFuu9yE-] database access error: The remote name could not be resolved: 'db.cuetools.net'
==== Log checksum CBA91FECEBD480BF6CE1B58B1E72FB1148148E8EA2B986B7AAC71B1465817C91 ====
EAC extraction logfile from 19. October 2023, 9:11
My Octopus Mind / Trying To Be Normal
Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GT70N Adapter: 0 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 103
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 4:18.04 | 0 | 19353
2 | 4:18.04 | 2:54.10 | 19354 | 32413
3 | 7:12.14 | 4:00.39 | 32414 | 50452
4 | 11:12.53 | 4:53.08 | 50453 | 72435
5 | 16:05.61 | 1:37.73 | 72436 | 79783
6 | 17:43.59 | 4:28.33 | 79784 | 99916
7 | 22:12.17 | 3:22.67 | 99917 | 115133
8 | 25:35.09 | 5:28.13 | 115134 | 139746
9 | 31:03.22 | 5:06.03 | 139747 | 162699
10 | 36:09.25 | 2:31.06 | 162700 | 174030
Track 1
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\01 Made Outta Gold.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.5 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 963B6F33
Copy CRC 963B6F33
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK
Track 2
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\02 High Roller.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B6806735
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Track not present in AccurateRip database
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Track 3
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\03 Maiden Of Honour.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 262136BB
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Track not present in AccurateRip database
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Track 4
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\04 Made Out Of Lies.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.9 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC F8DCBD6E
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Track not present in AccurateRip database
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Track 5
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\05 Converse Conserve.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.8 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track not present in AccurateRip database
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Track 6
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\06 Draining The Swamp.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 3.5 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 7
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\07 Moving Slow.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 3.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 8
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\08 Minor Celebrities.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 4.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 9
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\09 Wandering Alone.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 2.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 10
Filename D:\Rips\My Octopus Mind - Trying To Be Normal (CD 2023) - FLAC\10 Sabretooth Monkey.wav
Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 1.7 X
Track quality 99.9 %
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None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
No errors occurred
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.3
[CTDB TOCID: G2Sh1vnZhAwIimVgGtBBxFuu9yE-] database access error: The remote name could not be resolved: 'db.cuetools.net'
==== Log checksum CBA91FECEBD480BF6CE1B58B1E72FB1148148E8EA2B986B7AAC71B1465817C91 ====
Thanks to the Original ripper!