Optiganally Yours (Pinback) Shares “Whomever Watches You Sleep” Track Via Brooklyn Vegan | Rob Crow 2018 Artist In Residence For Joyful Noise

Brooklyn Vegan has shared the new track from Optiganally Yours, one of the many projects of Pinback’s Rob Crow. The track is entitled “Whomever Watches You Sleep” and it will be part of his 2018 artist in residence campaign with Joyful Noise. During this campaign he will distribute a record each month of the year from his various projects including Optiganally Yours, Thingy, Goblin Cock, Byre, Third Act Problems, Other, Remote Sequence Project, Physics, Anal Trump, and an unreleased Pinback single.

When talking about this track Rob issued this statement: “Optiganally Yours started in the mid 90s when one of Rob’s housemates, Pea Hix, got obsessed with the Optigan. This was a chord organ made by Mattel in the early 70s that played back lo-if sound loops on LP-sized discs. Think of it as the 70s version of GarageBand. When Pea had the idea to start a band around these haunting sounds, Rob chimed in and said “I’ll be the singer, and the band will be called Optiganally Yours.” Two albums were released in the late 90s (“Spotlight on Optiganally Yours” and “Optiganally Yours Presents: Exclusively Talentmaker”), with work beginning on a third. This album was to be called “O.Y. In Hi-Fi” because Pea had acquired the original studio master tapes which held all of the sounds recorded for the Optigan discs, and was assembling the basic tracks from thousands of loops and samples from these tapes. These sounds were all hi-fi studio quality, in contrast to the grainy, lo-fi sound of the Optigan discs. For a variety of reasons, the project proceeded in fits and starts, never quite gaining the momentum it needed to get finished, despite the quality of the songs. Some of the songs made it into the live set, but most of the rest have remained unheard for many years. Periodically the songs have been updated and re-recorded, such that very little remains of the original recordings made all those years ago. Now, with the release of Rob’s box set on Joyful Noise, the timing seems perfect to finally bring this collection of songs into the light!”