Fabric 45: Omar-S DETROIT

The next instalment for the fantastic and I must say well back on form Fabric mix series is from Detroit native and FXHE owner Omar-S. This guy is all at once a bit of a throwback and a pioneer. His productions hark back to the hay day of Detroit techno with it’s high tech soul edge yet there is something kind of new and refreshing by this approach in this day and age.

All sixteen tracks in the mix are original Omar-S productions from his FXHE Music imprint. I suppose you could compare the approach to Villalobos’ on his Fabric mix in which he pretty much made an original album that would probably be a bit lazy though. Plenty of DJ’s will play exclusives to keep their sets fresh and in demand, and Omar-S has a lot of freshness of his own that really needs some hype.

You really can hear echoes of Chicago house and Detroit techno throughout the whole mix. Tight punchy retro beats play off warm tweaked out synths in a really organic old sounding way. You can hear little quick edits and lo-fi glitches at times that just make the mix sound more human. It sounds like it could have been made any time between Strings of Life and the invention of the Gameboy.

The whole mix is a highlight to be honest but some stand outs have to be, piano led ‘Oasis 13 ½’ which sounds like a long lost E-Dancer number which then blends seamlessly into the brooding darkness of ‘1 Out Of 853 Beats’ with it’s bubbling synth lines and building beats. Tracks like, ‘Psychotic Photosynthesis’ are just irresistible and draw you in with their beautiful melancholic robo-soul chords.

Omar-S really knows how to get you hypnotized in the mix, clicks, bubbles, blips and a whole array of tricks skip around the tracks with a warm minimal sound. Then to throw you out of that collective mass all swaying to the techno beats a soulful vocal comes out of know where like on, ‘The Maker’ and makes you look around and feel that human side to the dance. It’s a living breathing beats he has managed to create here.