Makai – Omen

Incredible tune... so moody and dark. Both tracks are very similar but the directors cut seems to have better sounding drums.. This is the kind of darkness that i am really into, not tearout, but much more Silent Hill style creep. The grungy synth lead just rips on a sound rig! Restrained madness, feels like a catacombs prison cell in a straight jacket.. but in the best way possible.

Nico was invited to in 1996/1997, if i correctly for business purposes. He went to Hamburg (i'm not sure) and Cologne. That's why the runout matrix gives a shoutout to Groove Attack, the distributor for a lot of Drum & Bass in .

Anyway... He then went on to Frankfurt, as the Makai/Megashira guys were doing this great D&B stuff with a certain kind of teutonic sound i guess, that seems interesting to someone looking for interesting stuff to play out. The connection actually came via Cologne.

So Nico stayed a couple of days with Jan and Frank in Hanau, a few minutes away from Frankfurt, and they had a blast. Nico wanted them to see some clubs and go out on the weekend. He literally begged them to go to the Omen Club. You know... that infamous Techno Club that was run by Sven Väth and that guy from Snap! which a lot of people cite as being the birthplace of German Techno and the Frankfurt Sound in general (along with the Dorian Gray).

I forgot if it was one of the best nights in his life or a total disaster. If i it right, the Makai guys were hesitant to take him to the Omen and i guess the latter was what happened. Nico was a bit underwhelmed i guess.

In the end, they went home and made Omen, which got its name from the Club.

The release has two versions, which are quite similar. I guess it was made in a couple of hours. (Nico had to go back to England) So they share the exact same structure, but are saturated with different elements. In the end they are pretty interchangeable. DATs were sent back and forth, but i guess only one or two times.

Menacing distorted techstep with that continuous closed hihat and shuffled open hats. Distorted bass and glimpses of techno stabs and bouts of Amens interspersed. A great tune, but leaning more onto the Makai/Precision sound of that time than the Nu-Black/No U Turn stuff.