Wintertijd

Best By Far?

For a long long time, my friend Arno and I have been exchanging ideas about the world and music alike. One of the ideas he's had so far is that I should purchase records by a guy named Omar, a British gentleman who does funk/nu-soul. Somehow he must have played me the wrong tracks or described the wrong thing, because I never listened to Arno or Omar for that matter. Until recently.

I was in Amsterdam, walking along with Arno until we got to Concerto. We even tried walking hand-in-hand for the hell of it, but that didn't work because each of us wanted to walk with his own hand in the dominant front position. I guess that makes us too straight for our own good, but I digress. At Concerto Arno saw Omar's 2001 album "Best by far" for 8 Euros in the second hand bin. Since that's rather expensive for a secondhander, I wasn't too keen on buying it, also because I had 73 Euros worth of Merchandise in my hands already.

Discussion ensued and he forced it on me. Since then I have listened to it at home, on airplanes, in taxis and in the car, and I'm whacking myself over the head for not having bought this album when it came out. The track that I'm putting on the site here is the starting track of the album, and potentially it is Best By Far. In the sense that this opening song is the end-all be all of all opening tracks I've heard with maybe the exception of "Rikki don't lose that number" on the D's Pretzel Logic.

The album has got some funky soul, even when it's ripping through styles like Bossa, Trance and Reggae. Funnily enough the Title Track, Best by Far, is by far the weakest track on the album, to the point where I even skip it when it comes along at number 5. The other 14 tracks are brilliant, right up to the trancy re-mix of the second track that closes the whole affair. And I really don't like trance.

Also noteworthy are "To the top", which boast some seriously frivolous wind instruments and other sounds while remaining funky and "Come On" which has the best electro-bass line since Parliament's Flashlight. So please enjoy I guess by Omar. Merry Christmas and all that humbug, now run out and get that album.

Posted by Chris at December 26, 2007 02:18 AM