Oscar: Beautiful Words EP
In the 6ft 2” form of 23-years-old Oscar Scheller, a melody-savant has emerged from his messy bedroom in North West London holding a MacBook full of songs to save British pop with beautiful words: and notes and chords too.
You could even say he was destined to become an indie heart-throb. He studied sculpture at St Martin’s College. His Mum kicked it with Ari Up at The Mudd Club. His Dad was in New Wavers The Regents, then produced acid house. Songbook classicism pours out of him in a rich baritone. It’s how he deals with loss, painful things, family things or girls.
But the English guitar canon, and the love of Bobby Sox fan-winning crooners, like Ricky Nelson and Buddy Holly, isn’t the only thing going on here. He picked up the piano as a baby and learnt Erik Satie. At art school his sculpture was all about mix-media collage – as well as college humour. He pasted his own bathetic Biro-written notes onto Ruben’s ‘Judgment of Paris’ and things like that.
In the same way, his melancholic songs make heavy use of snippets of sampled breakbeats, naughtily broken off from 90’s East Coast rap records (he also loves rap). It’s like he fell asleep listening to ‘Parklife’-era Blur, followed by Nas’s ‘Illmatic’, and woke up with a gangsta melancholy synthesis boogie. ‘Beautiful Words’ even has a ‘Dem Bow’ beat swathed in Oscar’s fuzzy, scrunchy bedroom production (he takes his cues from other favourites here; The Radio Dept.)
Now signed to the home of so much awesome music over the years, Wichita, alongside their current roster of the likes of Waxahatchee and Girlpool, he’s one of the most brilliant new songwriting voices around to tune into. A light touch, a deep voice and mind, a heavy heart, and a new hero.
