Sometimes, the most unsettling truth is that the world does not grant us any assurances. In the shifting corridors of existence, our desperate hope for cosmic benevolence collides with the void, leaving us to wonder if anything—love, art, or memory—can stave off the inevitable march of entropy. It is from this liminal space, filled with both terror and dark beauty, that O.I.S (Other Inner Spaces) conjures its new material. By weaving existential dread into droning electronics and spectral melodies, OIS poses a question as old as thought itself: when all securities fall away, what remains for us to hold onto?
Solely a studio project in a modest 4’x6’ patch of Philadelphia basement, OIS is the solo endeavor of Anthony “Tony” Cesa. Since 2019, Cesa has been soldering together lo-fi, psychedelic electronics—an alchemy of early ’80s minimal synth impulses, washed in the echo of ’60s–’70s psych, krautrock vibrations, and the murmur of early electronic pioneers like Pauline Oliveros and Ilhan Mimaroğlu. The fruit of this introspection and meticulous home recording is The Farthest Reach, a limited cassette release capped at fifty copies, each side bifurcating OIS’s creative psyche: Side Awake captures the more structured, song-based compositions, while Side Asleep sprawls out in unbridled, improvisational electronic meditations.
These recordings span a two-year period of restless experimentation between 2022 and 2024, all helmed by Cesa from first spark to final mix. Mastering wizardry comes via Nathaniel Ritter (Kinit Her, Circulation of Light), injecting a sense of cohesion into OIS’s cross-temporal tapestry of tones. Meanwhile, Desert Ghost offers a welcome spectral cameo from guitarist Manuele Frau (Der Noir, New Polar Sound), haunting the track with reverb-laced filaments of melody.
Such conjurations are matched visually by the video for “Out on The Breaks,” filmed in a surreal, between-the-worlds hush up in the Vermont mountains by filmmaker Thomas Nola. Armed with a trusty handheld VHS recorder—and a creative itch stirred at some unholy hour after the children’s bedtime—Nola compiles footage of Cesa’s haunting visage orbiting sunflowers, giving cosmic context to the track’s warbling synth lines. It’s a cinematic testament to the album’s philosophy: we live beneath an indifferent sky, yet the potential for connection, for fleeting hope, resides in our brief glimpses of each other.
“Out on The Breaks” itself is a stark reminder that existence seldom grants protection. There are no benevolent gods hovering overhead, no guaranteed cradle of safety—only the impermanent bonds we forge and the resonance of our own creations. The track’s spectral hums wouldn’t sound out of place on a late-’70s PBS documentary about the universe, drifting beneath narration that touches on humanity’s near-infinite fragility. And yet the love we share—fleeting though it may be—remains the lifeline that makes the void just a little less daunting.
Watch the video for “Out On The Breaks” below:
Listen to Out On the Breaks via Bandcamp below. A note on purchasing from the artist:
“You can purchase The Farthest Reach on cassette or digital here, and if you really want to cut out the middleman and truly, directly support the artist and our faltering USPS, then send $10.00 worth of well-concealed cash to Anthony Cesa 3676 Stanton Street Philadelphia, PA 19129. If we don’t want corporate interference between the music and ourselves, let’s try returning to the postal service and cash. Just a thought”.
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