OK Go Produce 'Otherworldy' Sounds on New Album

Posted on Dec 18th 2009 11:00AM by Charley Rogulewski

Five years have passed since OK Go became a household name thanks in part to their treadmill-centric music video for 'Here It Goes Again.' For their third studio album, 'Of the Blue Colour of the Sky,' the band decided to change things up a bit and channel some of the '80s pop records they grew up with.

"For the most part, the change in our sound has more to do with the 'I'm sorta getting sick of something we've been doing for a long time,'" frontman Damian Kulash tells Spinner of the band's turn towards the psychedelic and anthemic. "I learned how loud you could make an electric guitar in high school, when I got all into it with Fugazi and Minor Threat."

Working with producer Dave Fridmann, the former Mercury Rev member who helmed MGMT's 'Oracular Spectacular,' OK Go went pretty crazy on the soundboard when creating 'Of the Blue Colour of the Sky. "There are a lot of sounds on this record that are hard to place that don't come from a known instrument -- just totally screwed up, distorted sounds. There's a lot where we distorted the s--- out of something until you couldn't tell what the instrument was anymore. I feel that has the same surreal feeling that classic psychedelia stuff has where it doesn't sound of this world. There's both an anthemic and sad quality to the record and both are well served by being otherworldly."

While Ok Go took their time making the follow-up to 2005's 'Oh No,' there are some things on the album that have been around for much longer, like the opening track 'WTF?'

"That bass line has been around for 20 years. I wrote the bass line from the song when I was in high school," Kulash says. "It was later a basis for an instrumental song in my college band that was Pixies-influenced. 'What the f--- is happening?' is the first line of the song. For a while we were going to call it 'What the F--- Is Happening, but we figured WTF does the same job."

'Of the Blue Colour of the Sky' is due out Jan. 12 from Capitol Records. Check out the video for 'WTF' below.