Track Listing:
1.
Just A Sample (
Intro)
2.
Body Double
3.
Memento
4.
T.A.B.
5.
Paper Bag Boxer
6. Mom's
Revolver
7.
Off The Horizon
8.
Interlude One
9.
I Want It All (
Feat. I
Self Divine)
10. The Hashishin
11.
Joint Operation
12. Interlude Two
13.
20 Million Miles
14.
Cliff Banger
15.
Coup D'Etat (Feat. Lodeck)
DJs are either going to play their own trumpet at maximum volume and vibrato, fighting for air space above the bustling tarmac, or they’re going to be humble and fulfill their craft out of a sense of empassioned duty, and not because it marks them out.
Omega One, NY veteran and graf writer, is one of the latter breed. Any hip-hop head worth their salt knows that it’s his production behind
Aesop Rock’s “
Sick Friend”, “
Skip Town”, and “
Coma”, making him responsible for some of the MC’s greatest moments over a period of three albums.
Perhaps not as widely known is the fact that the
nightmare vision of working life on the cover of
Labor Days is also his work, as is the cover of his debut on the reputable
Nature Sounds label, a strange yet oddly attractive blend of sci-fi monsters, fantasy landscape, fractals, Escher designs, and patchwork, presented in a range of pastels (graf is the visualisation of hip-hop music, let’s not forget that). You’ll also have heard him cutting and scratching all over
Blockhead’s heralded
Music By Cavelight, as well as backing up such NY mic juggernaughts as
Method Man,
RA The Rugged Man, and
Immortal Technique. Boy got chops. Before dropping this
album he put out a mixtape with Blockhead, the humbly amused We Didn’t Invent the
Remix, and also a dub reggae one with DJ
Ayres. The latter becomes relevent shortly, but let’s stick with Blockhead for now, as his crepuscular compositions are a grand example of hip-hop music that crept out of the night and into the musical consciousness of the masses with the appearance of
DJ Shadow’s
Endtroducing; and here tension is derived not from urban proximity but rather from the fact that the city lights glimmer far in the distance, and in contrast the surrounding natural darkness feels closer.
Outside city limits, the reassuringly monotonous club beat is often replaced by skittish drum patterns, pitched in the uncertain rhythms of the nerves; yet without the immediate pressures of the metropolis, the pieces can unfold into atmospheric lushness over the silence. There is frequently a sense of travelling through an unknown but beautiful landscape, and whilst this may lack the intensity of being caught in a mic booth spittle shower, it seems fair to note that it’s hard to appreciate the subtler power of a sunset when your “window opens on a brick wall”. Omega One’s tracks have a sense of thick depth and a loping fluidity that will make fans of dub reggae feel instantly at home even as they are taken through sci-fi thriller vistas of angst and steady momentum. He is brilliant at supplying just enough complexity to bind you into the rhythmic weave of the track, while allowing enough time and space for the effects, scratches, dialogue samples, and melodic embellishments to breathe as part
of a natural whole. He’s also adept at assembling compositions whose drums and melodic lines mesh into a satisfying flow, such as might otherwise be provided by an MC, with the result that many of the tracks here present a formidable rejoinder to anyone still unconvinced that hip-hop instrumentals are a coherent and complete musical form in their own right. That said, the merging of these two forms of tension into one glimmering, simmering whole, which Omega One pulls off to a greater or a lesser extent on almost ever track, is aided and abetted by the presence of MCs on two tracks: Minnesotan
I Self Devine on the stop-start double bass and swirling strings of “I Want It All” (
Warren G parody, anyone?), who absolutely kills it in utterly uncompromising yet intelligent style; and
ODB successor charisma-diamond-in-the-raw LoDeck, who, on album closer “
Coup d’Etat”, vents his frustration at the vapidity of modern
MCing. Bemoaning this betrayal of the craft’s essence is hardly inspired innovation, but rarely do you get the impression that the pain being felt is for the waste of possible art, rather than the venter being denied his rightful supremacy. “MCs done let me down” laments a sample over the lilting piano and guitar. You gotta feel that. -via popmatters
- published: 17 Dec 2015
- views: 181