- Every now and then a landmark track comes along which is outstanding, different—one you want to put on a pedestal, close sets with, or even have played at your wedding, funeral, or re-birth. You know yours, but these are some of mine: Mr. Fingers’ ‘Never No More Lonely’, Closer Musik’s ‘Maria’, Villalobos’ ‘Dexter’, Isolée’s ‘Djamel et Jamshid’. ‘Psychotic Photosynthesis’ may well be just such a track—ask me in a few months, but right now it feels that way. Suffice to say, if it were the only thing that Omar-S had written, he’d still deserve a fair proportion of his current reputation.
It all starts off with a rising bassline not unlike Pantha du Prince’s ‘Lichten’, and as it develops, you think you might be about to go on a journey somewhere in the direction of Ame’s ‘Fiori’. But Omar’s got his own style (and then some), building the interacting melodic elements from the bassline up with impeccable timing and restraint. One of the beautiful things about dance music is the way it can form an interlocking map of sounds and grooves, all of which play and build on one another. ‘Psychotic…’ does just that, drawing you into the fold with an atmospheric synth/bassline which is met by a counterpart that ‘answers it’ in a call/response pattern. Things get wilder as the tonepots twist the timbral values of these two grounding elements, while Omar throws wilder and longer notes over the top. That’s pretty much all there is—no fancy FX, no gratuitous breakdowns, no screamin’ diva plugins—but that’s plenty. There’s just such a great use of builds and an unending sense of tension unfolding that you imagine that he could go on revealing parts of the idea for an E2-E4 length of time. And when things do come back into land around the ten minute mark, there is the sense that you’ve really just been somewhere, and just heard something. ‘Psychotic Photosynthesis’ is a real trip.
TracklistD Psychotic Photosynthesis