This piece by Detroit Techno producer Omar S is one of my favorite discoveries by him recently. It combines the focused minimalism and emphasis on textural evolution of some of my favorite techno with a wonderful sense of melody and atmosphere. Omar S, generally, is great and I love his music. I could just turn this post into a big block YouTube embeds, but I won’t out of some misguided sense of self-discipline.
The early aesthetics of house were raw and unadorned, almost ugly in their synthetic, underproduced nature, in contrast to Disco of the time which was sleek, slick and sexy. House was very gay, very black and generally not signifying as ‘sophisticated’. Techno had slightly different parameters given it’s self-conscious afro-futurism. Of course the boundaries between the two are permeable and not worth policing. Omar S music maintains the directness of early house and techno in his music while still managing to transport us to incredible, and importantly, emotional places. While so much modern and European influenced house and techno has undergone a seemingly endless process of becoming sleek and slick, there are still soulful signals emanating from the black, American birthplace of the music.
This balance of rawness and adornment has been something I’ve wrestled with mightily in my own musical output. It is not easy to make something as minimal as Omar S that works and still transmits the feeling. It’s a unique and specific skill and one of the skills I respect most in musical production. In my opinion it’s really easy to just layer and layer and layer elements, bells, and whistles to create a feeling of ‘fullness’ in a piece, but often the result is a kind of simulacra of impact. Omar S transmits incredible feeling with straightforward drum machine tracks and the bare minimum of textural variation and harmonic elements. I find his music beautiful and deeply affecting.
