Otto Maddix is a time traveler. One minute he’s a ‘60s teen, three and half hook-filled minutes later he’s touching down in a post-industrial world of marauding robotic mechanical beats. He’s ambient, he’s Teddy Boy, he’s a synthesized orchestra.
How does he get away with it?
“Same melody,” Otto reveals. “I never mess with the melody.”
Maddix is one of those who spent so much time around music when he was a kid—mom’s a music prof at the college on the hill, dad was a session musician in big cities and now leads a swing band—that it’s like music is Maddix’s older sibling.
“I admit it. I’m more into styles. I crafted this one melody that I run through all these genre filters. Maybe there’s an album in that, maybe not. I’ll move on eventually to another melody.
It’s like Otto Maddix has found the lost chord and then went searching for what to do with it. Among the locals who helped on the safari: Olivia Hare (keyboards), Delia Worth (Violin), “Boss” Logan (bass), The Barajas (vocals & castanets) and Mr. & Mrs. Maddix. Mostly though, it’s multi-instrumentalist Otto in his bedroom late at night.
Listen to some 27 variations on a theme tonight at the Bullfinch. If it sounds exhausting, know that a bunch of them will be prerecorded. “I really need it to be constant,” Otto fills in. “Can’t break for half an hour and have someone else’s music in my head. Therefore the Maddix musical mélange is the only sound scheduled for Sunday evening at the Bullfinch. When does such domination by a single act occur there, except when local all-stars jam for multiple sets on the holidays?

Saturday comes first: American Completed in Canada and Sufficient Hearing Capacity do that mystical at the ‘Finch… Exit Seat and CRJ crank the covers at Hamilton’s… It’s the Elements Tour of fleeting successes Fire Smoke Debris and Water Evacuation at D’ollaire’s…