Emo synthscapes signal a wunderkind
Who?
How did your teenager spend lockdown? Honing their ‘Fortnite’ skills? Claiming that the Wi-Fi wasn’t working so they could avoid live-streamed lessons? How about making a highly accomplished electronic album when they should have been doing their homework? That’s how OSCCR, a 17-year-old electronic musician from Brooklyn, spent his.
Why OSCCR?
His self-released debut ’Stasis’ landed in June 2021, and it isn’t what you might expect from a teenager operating in electronic music. Featuring deeply melodic, highly complex instrumental pieces, the album is full of memorable passages carrying an emotionally powerful sentiment. “I make instrumental music which takes inspiration from my personal life and emotional experiences,” says OSCCR. His bio and messages might be written in lower-case text, but his music, like his alias, is resoundingly bold and upper-case. ‘Tired Sick And Irritable’, the first single to be taken from his second album, ‘Emotional Wreck’, is a restless, insistent, regimented banger overlaid with ricocheting percussion. Its intricate synth patterns and rich bass tones suggest OSCCR has been freely raiding his dad’s Vangelis collection (more on that in a moment). Its follow-up, the arresting, minor symphony that is ‘Fish Out Of Water’, is led by a central hook that is resolute yet beautifully uncertain, guaranteed to give goosebumps. Meanwhile, the album’s title track shimmers like some elusive heat haze, all elegiac vocal textures, non-linear rhythms and spirals of haunting synth melodies.
Tell Us More…
Aside from some uncomfortable parent-teacher video calls to explain the lack of home study, his parents couldn’t have been prouder. Then again, when your father is Erasure’s Vince Clarke, perhaps you can understand why. OSCCR’s first single ‘Dust’ was an inter-generational collaboration between OSCCR and his old man. Go and check him out .
