Oxford Collapse
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Oxford Collapse

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This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Filter Magazine"

87%
"Remember what is was like to be able to just let go and dance like a lunatic at an indie rock show? No, me neither. I'm not old enough. And I live in Los Angeles, where you aren't allowed to do anything really fun at a concert because someone else might actually see you (or you could mess up your hair). That's why you should move to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn they have these really cool dance-punk bands like Oxford Collapse and you can go and watch them play music and it's just so catchy and bouncy and awesome that you can actually start jumping around and shaking your hips and maybe even SMILE! It's true! And no one will talk about you or point you out to their friends because they're too busy jumping around to care! And then after thes how you can buy their debut album Some Wilderness which sounds like a less abrasive Les Savy Fav meets a less heady Mission of Burma and you can play it at home and just dance and dance and dance! Awesome! -Pat McGuire
- Some Wilderness LP Review


"The Tripwire"

On their debut CD, Some Wilderness, Brooklyn’s Oxford Collapse have firmly planted their foot in the territory held by contemporaries The Liars, Radio 4 and Erase Errata. Michael Pace, Dan Fetherston and Mike Henry band together to produce spasmodic art-punk/no-wave that is angular, dissonant, and twitchy, yet engaging and attention-grabbing at the same time. Guitar parts that echo early REM meet up with Pace’s all-over-the-shop vocals and disco punk percussion to provide a one-of-a-kind listening experience. While at times it may be the aural equivalent of those Japanese cartoons that give kids seizures, if you find a way to keep your brain from bouncing about in your skull during the extra spazzy moments, you are treated to a rather tasty display of swelling dynamics and itchy riffs. Helmets not required. -Reviewed by Jeremy P. Goldstein - LP Review


"City Paper (Philly)"

It's almost too tempting to play on Oxford Collapse's name -- the Brooklyn trio's debut album, Some Wilderness (Kanine), possesses more than one glorious, twitchy moment where breakdowns will, most assuredly, break out on the dancefloor. But the band's skill, and what makes Some Wilderness one of 2004's standout releases (it comes out April 14), lies in their know-how when it comes to pasting all those pieces back together again. "1991 Kids" is absolutely pummeling, with a spiky guitar line playing off a jumpy bass melody and strangled whoops. And the album-closing mini-epic "Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night" takes guitars that sound like they were brought to the future by those 1991 kids (so fuzzed-out and chunky, they must have been transported directly from Yoyo Studios) and, ever so gradually, guides them into leading a gleeful, whirling dance party. Six minutes in, you can see the sweat and the wide grin on every partyer's enraptured face, as the band spins to a satisfied, exhilarated halt. - LP Review


"Time Out NY"

Brooklyn trio Oxford Collapse plays with a strong, nervous edge on Some Wilderness, a nicely spastic album with taut guitars summoning a myriad of good punk heroes. - Review


"Philly Weekly"

Much of Some Wilderness, the debut full-length from Brooklyn trio Oxford Collapse, plays like a Rough Guide to Excess. Verses are separated from choruses by mini-lessons in finger-picking, chord patterns repeat like Seinfeld episodes, and the vocals are almost willfully arbitrary. But give it a bit more time, and unlikely influences will start worming their way to the surface. The zombie like mantra in the middle of "1991 Kids" recalls the chants of "The Weather! The Leather!" that close out Swell Maps' "Vertical Slum." The locomoting bass line that opens "The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" is an eerie doppelganger for the first eight bars of R.E.M.'s "Seven Chinese Brothers." In the end, all of Oxford's indulgences are dwarfed by the nimble--and impressive--reconfiguring of their influences. (J. Edward Keyes) - LP Review


"Careless Talk Costs Lives"

"They are nerds, they dress wrong and say inappropriate things at inopportune times, but beneath that, Brooklyn trio Oxford Collapse are one of the most solid acts around. Weaned on early-to-mid Nineties American indie rock, these gents churn away in flux between hardcharging combos like Mission of Burma and Husker Du, to the dancier sounds of The Rapture and Radio 4. Frontman Mike Pace howls and slams his guitar like he's trying to kill it, tearing away huge chunks of anti-aircraft chord flak with reckless abandon. Strengths: Little pockets of amazingness. Weaknesses: Wear flipflops onstage.
-Doug Mosurock - Feature


"Creative Loafing"

Brooklyn band Oxford Collapse plays new-wave no-wave like a trio of crossed, frayed wires. A blaring bundle of angularities, the group marries raucous spasms, growling grooves and arrhythmic electrickery into schizophrenic disco-punk, like blending Radio 4, Mission of Burma, the Liars and Erase Errata at a fever pitch. - Atlanta


"Taste Music UK"

"Everyone deserves their own personal slice of the Brooklyn trio's high-speed post punk mayhem. 'If it dies in Peoria then who the hell cares' demonstrates more jaw-dropping quality in its 3.19 than I've heard on most records this year. Put together a fucked up drunken pulsating zig-zagging mass of intense hi-hattery at the forefront of percussion which hisses like a badly tuned and highly poisonous radiosnake, scratchy jittery rattle guitars, 70s exploitation wocka-wocka, sqelching bass, distant lunatic vocals and an army of flailing limbs. Stop start indiefunker 'Grasses of Anne' follows, strutting around like a disco Joy Division....Oxford Collapse is doing something very special and completely unmissable." Ash Pocock - EP Review


"Dance of Days"

"It's highly danceable, a bit noisy and sexy as hell. There's definitely mid 90s Shotmaker-ish screaming, grooving bass lines and totally dance music influenced drumming, almost as if the Faint were using traditional rock instruments only. Or house music played by punk rock kids without electronics. Whatever, good music defies categorization and these songs are of that level." - EP Review


"Whisperin' and Hollerin'"

"Oxford Collapse, then, is undoubtedly a band to watch. Such is their feverish delivery, they can barely contain the ideas they want to share with us during this souped-up EP and - while some of this is surely in touch with the current Punk-Funk drowning craze - there's enough dissimilarity and striving to go beyond to set them apart from the pack. Where they'll go with their album is difficult to plot at this stage and that's definitely very good reason to stay tuned in." - EP Review excerpt


Discography

Some Wilderness
LP
Released April 2004

1. Land!
2. 1991 Kids
3. The Money You Have Is Maybe Too Little
4. Cumberland Gap
5. Melting the Ice Queen
6. Totally Gay, Totally Fat
7. Back in Com Again
8. For Buds, Not Boston
9. General Hospital
10. The Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night

Untitled EP
Re-released December 2003

1. If it dies in Peoria...then who the hell cares?
2. Grasses of Anne
3. Sex Face
4. (Havin' a Blast in) Co-op City
5. Melting the Ice Queen
6. Bobby V.

Fort Apache 12"
Summer 2004
Side A - Melting the Ice Queen (Remix)
Side B - Fort Apache, Celebrity Art Party

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Oxford Collapse could have happened anywhere and anytime between 1980 and today, but it's in New York City, it's right now, and it's leaving a dry, predictable status quo in emerging hipster music hanging in peril.

Buzzing and restless, overjoyed and confrontational, Oxford Collapse's music telegraphs a passion for the last two decades of American indie rock exuberance. More importantly, they look to that music's forefathers - bands like the Embarrassment, R.E.M., Mission of Burma, the dBs, Pylon, and the Feelies - who charged forward, innovatively liberating what they needed from their well-versed musical pasts and building them into a shaken, florid, ever-focusing present, only to be appreciated in the future. Moreover, these bands performed with a marked sense of innocence, amazement, a feeling of wonder that's all but gone in the deluge of post-punk revivalism, which only seems to recall the oily glitter of Blondie or the sharp edges of Gang of 4 and Public Image Ltd. Oxford Collapse chooses not to crowd these lands, particulary since there's so much open ground to cover elsewhere. Blue skies, wide expanses, the drive to discover Some Wilderness within and without the maps of musical hierarchy.

There's Michael Pace, guitarist and vocalist, who pulled the neck of his long-suffering Sekova Les Paul copy right off during the recording of Some Wilderness. Dan Fetherston, tasked with learning how to play drums specifically for this band, and filling the spaces capably with the disco ride. Yong Sing da Silva, who graced the stage at Pianos in a too-tight Polo shirt, Tuffskins and flip-flops, on bass (he's moved on to medical school; the equally fashion-conscious Adam Rizer now fills those shower shoes). They started on a semester abroad in London, creating dissonant screamo maximalism for complete cathartic release. They found their ways, sculpting the dissonance around the sounds of their Poindexterian brethren, opening chords and tunings, building dynamics against one another, and toning down the distortion on the relentless speed they play at. Pace's guitar style closely mimics the anti-aircraft shred of Roger Miller, crashed right into the nimble lyricism of early Peter Buck. The rhythm section responds in kind, with dizzying bass scales all over the register and drumming that nearly topples over on itself while filling every last breath of space.

Oxford Collapse plays the sounds of the suburbs, the blue print of early summer, hopped up on candy scarfed down at bar mitzvah blowouts, at the batting cages, sneaking around all day at the multiplex, then turfing the neighbor’s lawn on a riding mower for good measure. They flip over big flat rocks and gaze fascinated at the insects living a private life beneath. They know that the devils and the details don't need one another to get by, and demonstrate that with some of the wildest manic pop abandon heard in years.