Optiganally Yours began as a fascination with the Optigan, a keyboard manufactured in the early and mid-'70s by Mattel, and grew into a long-lasting showcase for Pea Hix and Rob Crow's whimsical creativity. The duo takes the Optigan's murky, faraway sound -- which comes from the lo-fi loops encoded on the celluloid discs it plays -- in directions that range from heartfelt to ironic and from nostalgic to experimental; they're equally comfortable paying homage to Philip Glass and the Shaggs. With every release, the duo broadened the project's scope: 1997's Spotlight On... fell somewhere between the early-'90s lounge revival, the sample-heavy productions that dominated the end of that decade, and the hooky indie pop of Crow's former band, Heavy Vegetable. Later, 2000's Optiganally Yours Presents: Exclusively Talentmaker! featured Optigan spinoffs and 2018's O.Y. in Hi-Fi sampled the '70s-era studio recordings used to make the instrument's discs. On these albums, as well as their prolific remixes and contributions to compilations, Optiganally Yours' sense of wonder and mischief is even more distinctive than their instrumentation. Optiganally Yours began in San Diego, California, when Hix, a UCLA grad with a degree in music and a member of Tit Wrench, found his first Optigan at the Salvation Army in 1995 and wanted to start a band using the instrument as its focus. His housemate, Rob Crow (ex-Heavy Vegetable and also a member of Thingy, Pinback, and Physics), volunteered to sing. After spending some time playing cover songs, the duo began writing original songs and sent a demo tape to Cargo Records, who signed the band and released Spotlight On... in 1997. The album's blend of hooky songwriting, lo-fi production, and strangely lush arrangements won critical acclaim from NME, CMJ, Melody Maker, and Cool & Strange Music Mag, among other publications. Hix and Crow then contributed tracks to a number of compilations, including the OMD tribute Orchestral Interpretations in the Dark, a benefit album for East Timor, and March Records' Reproductions: Songs of the Human League before releasing their second full-length, Optiganally Yours Presents: Exclusively Talentmaker!, in June 2000 on Absolutely Kosher Records. On this album the duo played the Vako Orchestron and the Chilton Talentmaker, which were slightly varied descendants of the original Optigan. Following the album's release, Optiganally Yours appeared on The Powerpuff Girls: Heroes & Villains, the soundtrack to Cartoon Network's popular series The Powerpuff Girls, and reworked Kahimi Karie's "Pygmalism" for her remix album SPIN! In 2001, Hix and Crow contributed a version of "You're Something Special to Me" to Better than the Beatles: A Tribute to the Shaggs, and released De-Composed, a remix EP featuring Lesser and the Moog Cookbook's Brian Kehew. Around this time, the duo began working on Optiganally Yours' third album. Hix managed to find the original studio master tapes used to make the Optigan's discs (they'd been stashed in a SoCal garage for years). With hours of recordings that never made it onto the discs -- and all of it in high fidelity -- it was a treasure trove of material for Crow and Hix. However, their other commitments delayed their work on the album: Hix worked as a composer and sound designer in San Diego's theater scene and continued to promote and preserve the Optigan, while Crow worked steadily with Pinback, Goblin Cock, and his numerous other projects. After lots of tinkering -- which included higher-quality digital transfers of the tapes -- Optiganally Yours debuted some of the songs intended for their third album at their 2010 concert dates. In 2013, Crow and Hix offered a preview of their cleaner sound with a version of "And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon" that appeared on Raymond Scott Songbook, a Japanese tribute to the great composer and inventor. The following year, Optiganally Yours appeared on Running Up That Hill: Kate Bush Covers for Reproductive Rights. Eighteen years after Hix and Crow started work on it, Optiganally Yours' third album, O.Y. in Hi-Fi, finally saw the light of day in 2018 as part of Crow's residency with Joyful Noise Recordings, which also included releases by Thingy, Goblin Cock, Physics, Anal Trump, and Pinback. ~ Heather Phares