Project Spotlight #8: What is ORC?

ORC was born in 1994 when Jason was recording “Pedestal Song” and Jimmy stopped by the Studio for a visit. Jason reworked the lyrics, threw Jimmy a mic, and they both recorded the vocals. After that session Jimmy was given vocals to sing on other songs. Eventually Jimmy was contributing his own lyrics and recording his own instrument parts.

It was a couple years later when they actually named their project. The name came from a computer game they had both played called Warcraft. It had humans versus orcs. A project called Human sounded silly so they went with ORC. Originally the name was written O.R.C. but they could not decide on what it would stand for so they dropped the periods and left it ORC.

Their first album took over five years to record. They finally finished Purging the Great Abyss and released it on March 2, 1999. It was the first album released on CD from the Studio.

ORC music can best be described as experimental. It is rarely just drums, guitar, and vocals. They have used a violin, a wrench, backwards recordings, and various other instruments and sounds. And recording methods are just as experimental. They have used a 4-track cassette recorder, a computer, a separate sequencer, and various other hardware to compose their music.

Even though they have only released one album to date there is a lot of unused material in the ORC vault. Various releases have been considered but nothing finalized. There will definitely be more ORC material released in the future.

In fact, the next album released by the Studio could very well be a new ORC album. Metal XOR Studio is in negotiations with Attic Works Studio to do a joint recording effort involving Jason and Jimmy recording new material from the two different studios. This project is still in its early planning stages, so stay tuned to this blog for further developments in this project.

Update
On Saturday, September 20, 2008, Jimmy and Jason were goofing around on a Voice Over IP program and inadvertently recorded a few new songs. The songs were put on a CD and released as the EP Thru the Vent on September 23, 2008.


Next week: Who are Harry and Jason?