Omar S – Romancing The Stone
When Omar-S isn’t getting a kick out of trolling the Juno Plus editorial team by email correspondence, one can get the sense that he’s hermetically sealed himself away in his Detroit workshop, sitting on a mountain of unreleased material. Back in 2009, Alex Omar Smith discussed how his attention span with his music had been reduced, talking about getting “ear-drunk” on his own productions to the point of paralysis. “None of that shit to me sounds good anymore, nothing, not even my own music”, he pessimistically said. But FXHE’s busy release schedule suggests otherwise. Since that interview, Smith has put out some of his most anthemic material to date, and his recent 10 Year Compilation mix showed just how muscular the label’s discography has become: From L’Renee-featuring bedroom jam “S.E.X” to euphoric long-player “Here’s Your Trance Now Dance” to the crunchy space-synth of OB Ignitt’s “Oh Jabba”, it’s a catalogue that shows no sign of creative exhaustion.
However, the question that the four immensely disparate tracks forming Romancing The Stone raises is “When were these made?” The sharp change in styles between tracks feels more noticeable here than in any of his previous EPs. It raises the question of whether Smith is mixing old tracks with new ones, or whether the FXHE catalogue has grown to proportions equal to the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark and he’s just picking through what gets released next at random. “Romancing The Stone” comes closest to emulating Smith’s work on his most recent pop-friendly work. It’s got the rolling optimistic tone of “Tonite (Detroit Mix)” mixed with the blissful, creative synth work of something like Ob Ignitt collaboration “Wayne County Hill Cops Part 2”. Smith has proclaimed that he can turn out tracks in fifteen, twenty minutes tops – and the way “Romancing The Stone” unfurls suggests that it might’ve come out of just such a session. Clocking in at 33 minutes split between four tracks, this EP is proof that a little room to let tracks breathe and develop is a good look for Smith.
Nine-minute jam “Frogs” is the track that’s most likely to alienate some and thrill others; a volatile head-scratcher of a DJ tool. Beginning with a subdued Chic-esque guitar line, snaking pixelated blasts begin to overwhelm the track – sounding like the video game equivalent of running shoes squeaking on a fresh gymnasium floor. At the midway mark, the guitar lick cuts out, leaving the sparse acid instrumentation to bounce around like sound in a dark tunnel. It’s unsettling eerie, empty, minimalism, and in the hands of the right DJ, it could work wonders in a dark room. Eventually the guitar-line faintly comes back in, but at the nine minute mark, the song cuts out with next to no warning. One gets the feeling that, having wrung the emotions he wanted out of the track, Smith simply switched off his recording tools and moved onto the next one.
“Surpass” might set the EP’s high point – exploring maximal piano house reminiscent to House of House’s hit “Rushing to Paradise (Walkin’ These Streets)”, it has the same slow-building momentum that Olivier Spencer and Saheer Umar wield, with skittering little syncopated drums adding a bit of muscle. Given the organic nature of the track, this writer’s guess is that Omar-S collaborator Dave Taylor’s might be manning the CP-1 keyboard on this one just as he did on the terribly-named “The Shit Baby” from last year’s Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself . Whether it’s Taylor or Smith behind the keys, they know the nuances of building up anticipation to a tee, and “Surpass” erupts into pure past-referencing Detroit soul at the five minute mark. If this is any indication of the stuff Omar-S has been sitting on, be it from this month or the late ’90s, FXHE continues to serve as one of Detroit’s foremost indispensable labels.
Brendan Arnott
Tracklisting:
A. Leave
B. Romancing The Stone
C. Frogs
D. Surpass