Oneida: Accidental oddballs

Like the fuzzed-out, noise-addled psychedelic soundscapes that pour forth from its instruments, Oneida doesn’t fit neatly anywhere. It has worn more tags in its nine-album, dozen-year career than a clearance-shelf tchotchke — kraut rock, garage-psych, avant-garde jazz, post-rock — but nothing sticks.

“If you come to our music looking for brutality, you’re not quite going to get it. Or if you’re looking for classic funk or kraut rock, it’s not really there,” says keyboardist Fat Bobby. “It falls between a lot of things.”

Its latest, Preteen Weaponry, is inimicably Oneida, a 40-minute, three-movement piece that ranges the sonic spectrum from spacey, burbling sound effects to bluesy, undulating jams to rippling breakbeats worthy of Goldie. Almost completely devoid of vocals, it developed out of an idle conversation about what the ultimate song would sound like if the band was to make one.

It’s only the first in a flurry of activity that also produced a triple album titled Rated O – “a sprawling thing of a bunch of very high intensity stuff,” according to Bobby – already recorded, mixed and due out next year. Not to mention another album planned for next year that’s conceptualized and partially recorded, which Bobby describes as “gentle, post-brutalized confusion.” Lately, Oneida’s odd, experimental neighborhood has been gentrified by the burgeoning noise-rock and neo-psych movements. From the noisy pyrotechnics of Lightning Bolt, to the sputtering noise of No Age and Pissed Jeans, to the freak-folk explosions of Six Organs of Admittance, Oneida’s no longer living on the outskirts. Not that it ever set out to be an iconoclast.

“I still can’t believe this music isn’t massively popular, but I’ve come to accept that it’s not. Somehow I’m damaged inside,” Bobby says. “Drummer Kid Millions and I have been playing together in bands for more than half our lives, so we have our own little world and our own little consciousness. Sometimes that can seem impenetrable or perverse, but that’s not the intent.

“On the other hand, I do at times take pleasure in people who bring preconceptions to my band and find that doesn’t work very well,” he adds. “It’s kind of our thing to hunker down, make our music and disappoint as many people as possible at high volumes.”

Oneida plays the Drunken Unicorn with Dark Meat, Dirty Faces and Jah Division Electronic Sound System. All ages. $10. Wed., Aug. 20. 9 p.m. 404-870-0575. www.thedrunkenunicorn.net.