A 12-minute track that works like a mini-mix and an electronic vocal houser recorded like a band. Omid 16B is back bending the rules again with part two of his Sequential EP series… And check out his Omid In The Mix HERE…
‘Forward-thinking’, ‘innovative’, ‘pioneering’ – labels that have been attached to producers so often that they’ve almost become meaningless. Which is a shame, because the true pioneers are now lost in the barrage of superlatives that lazy hacks pile upon any producer who creates a tune with a twist. How, for example, are we to reveal the real innovators, the producers like 16B, who have been pushing the boundaries of music for years?
To be fair, Omid Nourizadeh probably wouldn’t care how you label him. He’s too busy making the music he loves. And as luck would have it, that music is never dull. As 16B, ORN, and more recently SOS (alongside his mates Desyn Masiello and Demi), he’s been creating some of the most imaginative house sounds of the past decade without ever pushing his way into the limelight. His first two albums, 1998’s Sounds From Another Room, and 2002’s How To Live 100 Years, sound as fresh today as they did on release, twisting techno, deep house and even shades of trance into beautiful soundscapes that stand up to constant return listens. His labels, Alola and SexOnWax, have followed a similar path, releasing amazing music without the massive fanfare the tunes deserve. And last year, Omid broke all the rules again, when he dropped his third album, Like 3 Ears And 1 Eye, splitting it into two parts, creating two discs which segue seamlessly between styles and tracks to form, in effect, two massive multi-layered tracks.
Now he’s at it again with his new Sequential EP series. The trio of releases are all about doing things differently, and with the newly released Sequential 002, he’s making dance music in a way few other producers would dream of. The first track, Same As You, sees Omid returning to his roots in an indie band (in a way) with a completely live track – from the synthesised lead lines and bass to the beats and saxophone – that sees Omid on vocal duties himself. “I came up with the idea to have a few more musicians involved in Same As You to make the electronic vibes less stagnant and more spontaneous,” he says. “I had Simon Taylor from Ritz Music store in Putney play sax, and Loui Smith and Luke Armstrong plus myself on vocals. On the days of recording we jammed around with ideas and kept it natural and simple, moving forward with new harmonies and a better arrangement. The original version was 13 minutes long.”
The second track, The Move, is made to keep you guessing. It’s a mash-up of rhythms that are held tightly in place by a funky-ass, live-sounding bassline. Says Omid: “I don’t really care how long tracks end up, as long as they flow with a bassline, but even I was taking it too far when I ended up with this 30-minute club track. I wanted to include all my favourite elements in a solid club tune and build the track like a mini DJ mix.”
So with Omid letting his inventive musical mind loose again, EQ decided to find out more…
You must be busy at the moment, what with the Sequential releases, SOS and everything else.
Yeah, it’s been mad recently. I took three weeks off to concentrate on finishing the Sequential EPs, and the gigging starts again this weekend, so that’s me back on the road. And then it’s Miami. We’re doing our own party at BED this year and get really messy with our crew.
After that we’re relaunching Alola. I’ve been listening to the old masters and remastering some of the tunes, and they’ll definitely have mileage now, even with all the minimal stuff that’s around. I kind of see real house music coming back in. People must be sick and tired of all this minimal stuff. How many times are you going to wonk it up? It’s like CDJ warriors. So I think that kind of melodic techno vibe we had on Alola is definitely going to be good.
In those days, people had such a rumble in their tracks – there was such a dirty bottom end that you wanted to hear it in your home as it would sound in a club. Now all this technology’s come in and nobody’s putting bottom end on their records. So when I was listening to the old tracks, I was like: “We put nuff bass on our tunes!” Either our heads were somewhere else or we were really onto something. Music’s missing that now. So we’ll be rereleasing some of the old tracks and getting new remixes done. I’ll start it off with a new single from myself, then we’ll put out a couple of releases every month from the back catalogue, then as the label weaves itself in, we’ll get the remixes done and introduce some of the new producers I’m into.
I’ve also been doing a lot more live stuff, bringing visuals into the SOS set-up and testing it out at our new residency at Ministry. We’re doing four nights a year branded round SOS, getting our own guys into the other rooms. The sound system there is the sickest, and they’re a really good bunch of people to work with, so we’re really excited about this.
The whole idea of making on track like a mini-mix works really well, and it sort of follows on from the albums. Did you go into the studio thinking you wanted to do something really different again, or was it quite natural?
I just sort of realised that The Move has this bassline that could just roll on and roll on. It’s not going to get boring after three minutes – it’s got a real groove that you can just listen to. So once I’d got that I brought in some controllers for kicks and hi-hats and I just let it roll live. The whole track ended up coming together as it was getting arranged. Everything was feeding off each other. Then my mate Loui came up to the house, and he’ll quite often put down some vocals to see if I can use them. So he put down this little lyric on top of the track and it just sounded so rude. Now I can’t listen to the instrumental and think it sounds alright.
So that was the vibe of that track, and Same As You was pretty similar. I got to the stage where I thought there wasn’t much more I could do to it on my own. I needed someone else to get involved to come up with something spontaneous. So I ended up getting a friend in to play saxophone, Loui did some random vocals and the whole thing suddenly sounded fresh. Everything happened really nicely.
Has that whole way of working come about through SOS?
It’s maybe more the other way round – I’ll try out different things then take them to SOS.
Both tracks seem to pick up on elements from your past albums. They’d fit really well with the latest album, but at the same time, you can hear Sounds From Another Room and How To Live 100 Years in there.
Definitely. It’s weird – and I don’t want to sound like an arse when I say this – but when artists totally redevelop their sound completely, it’s interesting but it never sounds like it’s coming from their heart. It’s almost like a marketing tool. I just try to stick to the music I love – I’m never trying to compete with anything else that’s out there. I want to make music that retains what I love, and that always brings you back to the same place. So there is something that links all my records together – it’s like there’s a little story running through them. The trick is not to make them boring and not to repeat yourself.
Is that difficult?
No, because I am always reinventing what I do to a certain degree, but not to the point where I’m jumping off the cliff. I’m still on the edge, but I’m still on the cliff. I don’t want to say I’ll never change my style – I might, but my main aim will always be to just make beautiful music, music that’s coming through me. I won’t purposely change my style. I won’t force it. I love playing the guitar and I love playing drums, but I won’t make a rock record – although I think I could. In fact, me and Demi have actually been jamming quite a lot, recording a load of parts for us to put into the computers to manipulate.
Are you actually recording SOS tracks then?
Yeah, we’re looking to maybe do a comp/artist album at some point this year, so we’re working on bits that will go towards that. It’s quite mad, sort of interludes and really chilled stuff. There are these elements we’ve recorded accidentally that sound like the sickest basslines – we’ll plug in a lead in a wrong place and get some really nasty electric sounds. And we’re recording the lot. We’ve set up mics so we get every pad, drum machine, all the keyboards, everything while we’re jamming – then we’ll listen to it and chop it up. It’s really experimental. It almost feels like we’re making three albums in one mental day. But we’ll need to spend the next two years going through it.
It sounds like SOS is going really well then?
Yeah, it is. It’s difficult sometimes because there are three of us and it’s hard to get together, but we’ve got this loving bond, and we get the best out of each other. We make sure we’re all on it, which is really handy. And people who come to our gigs can see we’re not just a bunch of wankers giving it large. We actually work it – all three of us are on the decks during a six-hour set.
So what can we expect from the last Sequential EP?
There’s a track on there called Rain which is a sort of follow-up to my track Snow, which I did as ORN. It’s the sort of music that’s so uplifting and makes you feel great when you hear it. The other track hasn’t got a proper title yet, but at the moment, I’m calling it Epic. It’s got a French vocal, and me on the guitar on it. I’ve come up with this hook, but when I first played it, I was like: “I hope I’ve not copied this from anywhere,” because it was so blatantly in my head the whole time. So I asked our label manager Michelle, who’s like this 80s music queen, if she recognised it. If she’d said: “Oh, I know that,” I’d have scrapped it. But she just said: “That’s really good.” So hopefully I’m really onto something.
Have you been playing the Sequential stuff out?
Yeah, and it’s been going down pretty well, I have to say. I’ve been holding back on giving it to Desyn, but he records every set and then strips them out from there. He’s so sneaky…
Sequential 002 – Same As You/The Move is out on SexOnWax on March 23. Catch SOS at their residency at Ministry in London on April 18. Visit www.omid16b.com, www.sexonwax.com, www.sosthecollective.com
CLICK HERE FOR OMID IN THE MIX…
