Omar S – Here’s Your Trance Now Dance review

Omar S has made a career out of doing the simple things well; such as taking a single vocal loop from The Supreme’s “Come See About Me” and laying a shuffling filtered house groove beneath it on the eternally fabulous “Day”. On first listen the source is familiar and immensely pleasing on the ear, but never fully reveals itself. Indeed the entire FXHE empire is built on this kind of raw sound – there’s often not much more to his tracks than an analogue drum pattern, a few chords and keys, but when it’s done well it’s utterly beguiling (see “Psychotic Photosynthesis” as a prime example). His fabric mix from 2009 was a neat encapsulation of his style; keep it deep and dirty for a while, then feed them a couple of epic moments (finishing with the aforementioned “Day” and the Midway sampling “Set It Out”).

“Here’s Your Trance Now Dance!”, as one might expect from the title, fits into the end-of-night section of the Omar S discography. Waves of glistening synth patterns rise throughout – they are truly trance inducing – and beneath this a constantly ascending procession of gleeful melodic touches creates a simplistic yet deliciously crisp machine rhythm, replete with subtle arpeggios and infectiously warm bass nudges. This is a track that bears repeat listen through headphones to let the magic fully seep in, so we’ll leave it to you to imagine the devastation it will cause at 2am in a sweaty basement somewhere.

Omar obviously believes this track has legs, pressing it up as a one-sided colour 12″. He doesn’t tweet, rarely indulges in interviews, probably thinks Facebook is evil: all he has to fall back on is his attitude and his music. With such an impressive catalouge now behind him and some exciting future releases  – most notably an upcoming 12″ featuring straight up US garage-style fire from Mark Kinchen – it seems like there’s plenty of mileage in the FXHE tank yet.

Aaron Coultate