GOING TO JAPAN\nSitting around a table at Bears' Place, sipping on a Newcastle and joking away the time, the five men who are OlO show off the new shirts they will use for the recording of their first music video, the song "Red Man Go On."\n The shirts are blank except for the numbers 010 on the back. The shirts are all various colors, and the band members fight over which color each will wear for the video, which will be filmed in Brown County and Chicago. The video will air in Japan to support the album OlOrizedcoloralbum.\n OlO will tour Japan beginning in March.\n "Kampai," (cheers) says drummer Matt Griffin, who is trying to learn a little Japanese before the band leaves.\n OlO got its start in Japan from an interesting album cover and a little luck. Cornelius, a high-profile record producer and owner of Polystar subsidiary Trattoria Records, discovered OlOrizedcoloralbum and bought it because of its rainbow-striped cover. OlO isn't sure how the album got to Japan, and the clerk in Japan couldn't order additional copies.\n Cornelius liked the album so much that he named it one of his top 10 albums of the year. He signed the band a deal to release OlOrizedcoloralbum in Japan with two bonus tracks. OlO is also recording an EP and another album for release in Japan before its tour.\n "It's going to be total rock star Japan," says Brad Biancardi, vocalist and keyboardist for OlO.\n Vocalist and guitarist Corey Allbritten, a senior, says OlO is mysterious in Japan right now because the group members have never been seen in the country. But already the band has received acclaim from the public and from other bands in Japan like OOIOO, a group OlO admires.\n "We are a little intimidated because we're probably going to play with OOIOO," Allbritten says. "They rock so much."
APPRECIATING AMBIGUITY\n OlO's music, like their name, inspires a sense of ambiguity.\n Is it OlO or 0l0? The answer is neither and/or both. Griffin said the beauty behind the name is that very question. The band can't be pegged down to any one description.\n "We respect and appreciate that ambiguity," says Allbritten.\n OlO came to Bloomington in 1998 from Chicago. At the time, the band was Allbritten and Biancardi. Bassist Brian Booher, a senior, and Andy Muntean joined shortly after their arrival. After they released OlOrizedcoloralbum, Muntean left the band, but Griffin and Jeff Hedin would join in the following months.\n Allbritten is a philosophy major, and Booher is a general studies major. But the other members claim the group's collective major is a different story.\n "Sex and music," Hedin says. \n The band discussed the idea of the Individualized Major Program, in which a student can combine departments to create their own specialized major. Griffin suggests how to modify this program to fit the band's major of choice.\n "You'll be a roadie for a band, that'll be your internship," he says.\n At one point all the band members were in school. Now all but Booher and Allbritten have resigned themselves to playing rock music full time.\n Each band member draws his influences from diverse sources.\n "We all believe that anyone who is anyone, that is intelligent, that is going to put out anything that matters has to have diverse musical tastes," Griffin says.\n Allbritten says music is fueled by genres. As the band gets older, the members are moved more by different kinds of music. Because of that, their music is maturing.\n But Griffin says OlO's music isn't original -- he says no band can do anything truly original.\n "You just observe a lot, and you take from so many influences that you're taking such tiny bits and merging it into one big thing that it becomes unrecognizable," he says.\n OlO's music derives from a wide variety of sources. It delves heavily into jazz but also ventures into rock, pop and electronica.\n "I think interesting music is about the fusion of just a multitude of genres and a multitude of styles and a multitude of ideas," Griffin says.\n Their music, and their name, inspire a sense of ambiguity.
TIME MACHINE CONCERTS\n As the alcohol begins to set in, OlO opens up on a variety of conversation topics. Topics range from the state of modern music to Eminem to traveling back in time to live concerts.\n "I would want to be the man sitting in the bleachers at Live at Bombay," Hedin says. "Just sitting there and nobody knows that I'm there."\n Biancardi wants to see Pink Floyd, and Griffin would like to see Wes Montgomery and Whitten Kelly.\n "They actually, thank God, recorded that show, and it's the coolest live jazz show I've ever heard in my life," Allbritten says.\n Griffin was the only one to request a classical concert with Seger Muller conducting Muller's sixth symphony. Biancardi longed to see Bob Dylan's first electrical show.\n "No one in the audience was expecting it, it was like the first step in the (stuff) we deal with now," Biancardi says. He also recommends Kiss, which is greeted by cheers from the rest of the band.
LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE\n OlO has a long way to go before starting its Japanese tour. On the agenda during winter break was recording a new album and planning a smaller national tour with bands Sonna and Mahogany Throttle.\n After the release of its last album, Still Life With Peripheral Grey, the band is starting to work together, Booher says. Still Life is the first OlO project featuring Griffin and Booker. The band compares itself to a family now, complete with its own bank account and minivan.\n "Since we've had this relationship with each other for such a long period of time, we can actually be critical on certain things and just realize that's what it is and get past it," Hedin says.\n OlO created Still Life over a period of six months. Hedin says that includes five months of recording and about two weeks of intense recording. At 3 a.m. of the day the album was to be sent out, Still Life was finished.\n While OlOrizedcoloralbum is a studio album, Still Life was much more of an experience in that everyone worked together, Albritten says.\n OlO's audiences in Bloomington average between 100 and 200 people.\n "When we play a show here, it's a huge crowd, and they stick to the end," Allbritten says.\n But the band has tried to keep a level head through its success. The group considers itself a big fish in a small pond. Allbritten says they would be doing this even without success in Bloomington, nationally and internationally.\n And OlO shows no signs of slowing down. The band has been hard at work recording since Still Life's release.\n The band has no plans for another domestic album, but all upcoming Japanese releases will be available via import.
