OCP is Operador de Cabine Polivalente, or Multipurpose Cab Operator, or João Ricardo, of Porto, Portugal. Half Baked Ideas is 17 tracks of steady-going broken beats, dub tangents, and ambient jitter. Described in a brief liner note as “experimental locked grooves,” it’s a collection of (mostly) brief tracks in which interstitial compositions are made from downtempo detritus. They range in length, generally, from 54 seconds to a little under four minutes, most in hovering around or below two. There’s beats that sound like the drum machine is falling down a staircase (“Pierrot”), what could be a bicycle wheel aspiring to drone status (the opening track, “Anel”), and whirligig stop’n’start buzziness (“Trumpa”), just to name a few flavors. The one exception, the one nod toward longer form, is “Duckie,” which clocks in at over seven and a half minutes, manifesting noir-flavored ambient techno, as serene as it is devoid of color. None of the work here is half-baked, despite the album’s title. It’s simply left as ingredient, as sketch, as the bit of a larger, more “complete” work that you’d have on loop in your head anyway. So, it bypasses the concept of a song, and just goes straight to the groove that’s predetermined to hook into your consciousness.
Album originally posted at blackholetimewarp.bandcamp.com. More from OCP/Ricardo at operadordecabine.blogspot.com.