Oscar G is Kinda "Murk"-Y
Everytime I happen to glance at the cover of Innov8 by DJ Oscar G, I’m like, “What is this Che` Guevara record doing here??” Oscar on the cover is a spittin’ image of the 1970s revolutionary! This time he’s struck out on his own without the cover of Murk/Funky Green Dogs. But don’t give him total props just yet – this is average-to-good, but not great yet. I’d like to see him perform and/or record this mix live on the ones-and-twos, and then put out the album. Mixed smoothly, you get about sixty-two minutes of continuous, mostly formulaic house music.
Starting Off With a Bang
The disc opens by dropping you into the midst of a smokin’, pumpin’ dance set on the wings of an “Angel”. I praise it an intro cut because with the beat there is a slight air of mystery inside of the narrative. “Danceflow” is one of the best cuts, and since it has no words, a good example of Oscar’s feel for electronica.
Some tracks are a bit contrived or as we used to say “corny”, like “You” where the vocal encouraging the dance is a bit stilted and the race car sound effect sounds amateurish or like it from the ‘60s Speed Racer cartoon. The very next track, “Miami” he takes the sound south of the border into salsa land! This is bright and refreshing until a male voice comes in with a thick, trying –hard-to-be New Yorican accent sounding like the character Pacino played opposite Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio in that cocaine godfather movie! Amusingly it also sounds like the voice on an early 1990s 12” jam called “Fly Tetas” and turns it into the most annoying track upon repeated play – you just want to skip over it. The classic late-night jam here is the finale, “Anxious”; a long, spellbound and spine tingling groove to make you move.
A Taste Of Miami
In these post-Olympic months, I can still raise a rating card of three not-so-innovative stars for these sultry-soulful, Miami-influenced rhythms from this student of Frankie Knuckles and Tenaglia. Maybe he needs a bit more mentoring to clear the high bar as DJ mixed CDs go, since it is so easy to mix digitally these days, and a selector can thusly hide their blending inadequacies.
Released April 2008 on Nervous Records.
