Om Records: Seeing is Believing

At a time when dance-music compilations seem to be flooding CD racks to a degree that harks back to the days when K-Tel was king, it's good to know that someone is rising above the rest to make our choices a little easier. San Francisco's OM Records, an upstart label specializing in multimedia compilations, is literally adding a new dimension to urban club culture.

With five compilations under its belt thus far, featuring everyone from DJ Shadow to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, OM's mission seems straightforward enough. Taking the relatively broad "street jazz" culture propagated by URB and Straight No Chaser magazines as inspiration, OM acts as a 3-D tour guide to the streets and clubs of London, New York, San Francisco, and beyond.

Take, for example, its two new releases: Soul Motion and Mushroom Jazz. With both of these audio compilations, OM shows the new face of the urban soul music that lies below the surface of Billboard's R&B charts. Soul Motion presents a timeline of classy soul. Starting off with Curtis Mayfield's bedroom anthem "You're So Good to Me," it moves into the funky soul of Jhelisa, Hueman Flavor, and ST&P before sliding back to Tower of Power's shuffling funk classic "Soul Vaccination."

Mushroom Jazz features all new material chosen and mixed by DJ Mark Farina. It's an ultra-smooth mix of what would have amounted to the best time you never had at your neighborhood dance club -- and, incidentally, it's one of the best "knockin' boots" collections of the last couple of years. Farina's style is slick and unobtrusive, mixing new-jack R&B by dance-floor vet Lalomie Washburn, Naked Funk, and Paul Johnson, with underground rapper J-Live's "Longevity" thrown in for good measure.

But the CD-player component of these is just the beginning. Each audio CD includes a separate CD-ROM (both PC and Macintosh platforms are included). Since each OM release retails for the same price as a single audio CD, this extra component turns a good compilation into one of the best music values you'll get this year.

Soul Motion's CD-ROM program includes a "Rebirth" slideshow, with a timeline from Mahalia Jackson to the Repercussions; interviews and videos from Jhelisa and the MoFessionals; and even original movie trailers from the blaxploitation classics Shaft and Superfly. Mushroom Jazz presents an art show of club flyers from around the world ("Shroom View"), as well as information and interviews about such labels as Mo Wax, Boogie Back, and Talkin' Loud. It even has a section where you can remix your own music tracks ("Mixid Up"). Both CD-ROMs also include Internet links, to make taking the next exploratory step a little easier.

By producing compilations that are interesting to active scenesters as well as to neophytes who want to know more, OM is making the global village of urban club culture a little bit smaller -- and making it a hell of a lot easier to find your way around once you're there.

-- Brian Coleman