Since the launch of his imprint Istheway two years ago, Verona-based producer Omar Contri aka Shinoby has laid the foundations to a fruitful body of work that defies categories and easy classification. With no less than four EPs of rugged techno grooves as well as a couple mixtapes of chopped-and-screwed hip hop and dusty G-funk beats, Contri was yet to take the full-length leap – a gap about to be filled by ‘Celestial Bliss‘, his debut eight-track album scheduled for release mid-May.
Presented as a slab of “emotional, hostile, dark, grungy, dissenting, acidic and energetic” music, it finds Contri exploring a widescreen melange of rhythms, veering off from pacey hardcore-indebted destroyers through off-centre leftfield experimentations onto jarring phases of noise scapes and droning mechanics.
The back cover interestingly reads a quote picked from a thought-provoking article by Maria Popova, questioning the dichotomy between productivity and the so-called idleness often associated to much necessary stages of contemplation and reverie:
“I frequently worry that being productive is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but being absent from our selves, mistaking the doing for the being.”
Celestial Bliss is released on 2 x 12″ via Istheway in May 2017. Artwork comes courtesy of graphic designer Anita Poltronieri.
TRACKLIST
A1. Celestial Bliss
A2. My Dissent
B1. My Dissent (Syntappella)
B2. Forever More
C1. Shine Of Chians
C2. Making Art Amid Chaos
D1. Obscure Creed
D2. Days Of Despair