from The Local Record Round-Up Winter 1999-2000, Part II

"You may recall O'Reilly as the man with the bass whose first CD appeared last year. The seven songs here 'are mostly new', he says, and will be included on the CD he's preparing for fall release. Strasburg Railroad '78 and especially Red Leaf Dreamscape 2 are solidly grounded in O'Reilly's prime instrument, while Funk 101 is an example of a song that is truly a bass solo... and vice versa. Bur even when he's using the Roland VS-880 and is awash in effects, O'Reilly is to be commended for pushing the bass guitar beyond where whoever created it in the first place imagined it might go. The opener, Starcluster 12, (Dr. Who gets credit as an influence here), is barely recognizable as a bass tune once he's forced his five-string Growler through a ZOOM 506. (If that's a little too technical for non-players, suffice it to say that there is a strong synthetic element to the song.) Likewise Spacebass, which sounds only a little more like stringed instruments are at its core. My favorite is Maineline which O'Reilly calls his 'first ever surf instrumental.' (Seth Warner guests on drums, while O'Reilly plays both bass and a scorching guitar.) He winds up with It's a Powerful Pipe, another tune on which Warner guests, which includes samples from what had to be a dismal monster film, Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster. Again, O'Reilly is stretching, but that's why he's worth listening to: There's nothing pedestrian about his music. As I've noted before, musician's will love O'Reilly's stuff. Others ought to just listen and allow themselves to be swept up. Bennie Green, FACE Magazine.