Seth Olinsky is a singer/songwriter, guitarist, composer, producer and studio owner best known as the co-founder and lead vocalist of acclaimed, underground, experimental noise folk outfit Akron/Family. He’s also known as the creative mastermind behind the equally acclaimed project Cy Dune, a project that has found Olinsky exploring the blues, 50s rock and 60s/70s photo-punk through his unique lens.
Olinsky’s various projects have displayed a post-genre approach in which he collages several different genres simultaneously to create multiple meanings while purposely juxtaposing authentic and pure songwriting sincerity with self aware meta-meaning and pranksterism.
His latest Cy Dune effort Against Face is slated for a March 3, 2022 release through Lightning Studios. Clocking in at a breakneck 18 minutes, the album is a meta-punk blast through 20th Century art school punk forms mashed together.
Last month, I wrote about album single and title track “Against Face” a buzzing and mischievous, mosh pit friendly mash-up of Bob Dylan and The Stooges self-titled album — in particular “No Fun.” Against Face‘s third and latest single “Disorientation (Cut Up)” is a dazzling and mind-bending synthesis of angular Wire-like post punk, house music, and New Order/Manchester sound centered around enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks paired with Olinsky delivering dance floor friendly cliches in a series of non-sequiturs before the song breaks sown and remixes itself.
“It is sort of a meta take on song form that folds the remix into the song itself.” notes Olinsky. “I was also inspired by how House music samples guitars, and wanted to build a punk song that not only had dance elements, but was inherently self sampling as well. This approach leant itself lyrically to the themes of modern, fragmented consciousness but in bite size, iconic statements more inspired by the glossy, abstracted surface simplicity of Ed Ruscha’s or John Baldersarri’s artwork than by any narrative.”