Words by Ryan Masteller//Illustration by Ryan Flynn
The members of the Octopus Project hide themselves behind their wall socket masks, but underneath they’re all cuddly and indie, sweet little rogues from Texas who play impishly damaged guitars and synths and drums. Black Moth Super Rainbow on the other hand — I don’t know what to think of them. We know there are five of them, but all we get are shadows. They might be Muppets, or lizards, or wisps of smoke. They might be crazy scientists mixing music in beakers in a cabin in Pennsylvania. They might be children, lost, picking flowers in the woods.

Either way, this is a great match.

Neither band gets top billing, and each has a front cover. The Octopus Project’s three-eyed, three-armed, fanged nun gently strums her twin-neck acoustic guitar, suggesting a slight deviation of humanness into something a bit more cracked and skewed. Black Moth Super Rainbow, in true mischievous wood-nymph form, eschews humanness altogether as their horizontal-corncob-headed mutation weeps rainbow rivers for its bitten kernels onto a sideways field. And although some tracks here made it onto the record without getting rearranged by the other band, you can still play a challenging game of “Spot the Songwriter.” Where Octopus Project beefs up the songs with live drums and guitar, BMSR spreads on a thick layer of vocoder and PBS synth, practically daring you not to picture the technicolor silhouettes of children break dancing in front of a bright autumn background.

“Spiracle” starts the album with perhaps the best example of blending the two bands’ styles, with a live breakbeat and singalong vocodered vocals, synths lasering back and forth, and “Marshmallow Window” and “Runite Castles” further the collaborative effort. “Elq Milq” and “Psychic Swelling” are all OP, and BMSR counters with “Lollipopsichord,” “Lemon Lime Face,” and “Beds.” These go down sweet and easy, but there’s still enough storybook danger to balance the childish whimsy.

Even so, “Helium Tea” and “Copying Soup Onto Sexy Birdy” are unnecessary snippets that don’t bridge anything — and try saying “It Hurts To Shoot Lasers From Your Fingers, But It’s Necessary” before the four-second track is over. It’s not easy. “Foxy and the Weight of the World” is six minutes and 14 seconds of experimental drone that you’ll turn off long before it ends the record — flip-flopping “Tony Face” and “Royal Firecracker Teeth” would have saved it. But hey, isn’t that what iPods are for?

The long-distance collaboration between OP and BMSR over the past year has produced a consistently engaging synth-lap-pop confection, and with its October 31 release date, it was just in time for your Halloween party. You shouldn’t have to wait too long for new records by each band (they’re both in the studio), but you can line your teeth with candy-corn fangs and put House of Apples and Eyeballs on repeat while you wait.