OMAR Vinilo y CD

Review: Soul meets speed garage on this new V/A EP from Z Records, blurring the lines between the genres in just the way we like it. The opening track - Grant Nelson's mix of 'Starlight' by Dave & Omar - is a euphoric, piano-laced uplifter which both sonically and lyrically urges us to reach for the sky. That's followed by the DJ Fudge production 'Everything' by Chocolate Fudge Band, featuring lots of live instrumentation and a Curtis Mayfield style vocal, while over on the flip, 'Looking For You' proves to be a deep and bouncy cut filled with soulful Motown vocal chops and an organ workout worthy of any Sunday service, over a beautifully wonky house framework.

Review: Z Recordings chief Dave Lee has teamed up on this one with Omar, a prolific multi-instrumentalist who was awarded an MBE in 2012 for services to music. The result is 'Starlight', a serving of emotive soul funk with a nod to legend Stevie Wonder. Over on the flip, we have the late night boogie-down vibe of Destiny II's 'I'm Here For This' featuring Aria Lyric's powerful vocal delivery, underpinned by an uplifting arrangement that has summertime vibes abound. A new project by Lee, it debuted earlier this year with the excellent 'Play 2 Win'

Review: Future Tones hear producers Luis Malon and Omar drop two utter floor-heaters respectively, not holding back for a second in their admission that these are 'Tracks From The Future'. Malon's 'Freeze' and 'Flesh Is Stronger' are surprisingly (at least for a pair of time-travelling tracks) humanistic statements, bringing belligerent bangout beats, rapturously Reesing rhapsodies and even G-funk whistles to a driving pair. Omar's flips are much more vintage, moving seemingly laterally in dimension rather than linearly in time, and finding solace in a more neo-retro-modern vision of the future; 'Niusing' especially entices with its cascader twinkles and sawwing bursts.

Review: One of the UK's most distinctive, consistent and authentic male soul voices returns with his eighth album in 27 years... And it's a serious piece of work. Rich in range, warmth, creativity and a keen eye on the dancefloor, everything about him feels refreshed and energised. Highlights include the Dilla-meets-Iz & Diz style "This Way That Way", the glistening Balearic charm of "Feeds My Mind", the syrupy organs and harmonies on "Insatiable". Winding down with the almost filmic narrative "Grey Clouds", it's one of those records that will have you leaping up, flipping to side A and starting all over again. Feel the love.

Review: When love drives us wild - perhaps one too many cocoons in our stomachs have hatched as butterflies, leading to an over-excitation of winged beats - a paradoxical sense of undomesticated entrapment may follow. Whether or not our love is acted upon or returned, the fear is that the feeling will never go away, that we have been irreversibly rewilded, and that the mere mention of the person wall never fail to stir us. Kilque nailed the flooding feeling with 'I Can't Shake This Feeling' in 1982, where the motivic repetition of the chorus line "...must be love" added extra poignancy to the word "burden" to describe a song's hook. Now UK production talents U Key and Omar wax the tune extra weightily, lighting a cogno-scented candle of full-boded electro disco, eliciting strange, fatuous sensations in proximate suitors. The track boasts a full live brass and string sections, uniting Japanese and Bostonian talents; it also features Curtis Williams of Kool & The Gang on alto, while Oberheim and Moog add a modern electronic spice. Young Pulse's remix marks a sensorial broken-beat easer-upper on the B, with its foolhardy breakdowns and Rhodesy downturns.