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Rating: Newness and tradition, futurism vs folklore, originality and new directions; truly a great album "We Are The Shepherds" (2006): more precisely an amazing escapade! Behind the OMFO (Our Man From Odessa) project is German Popov, a Ukrainian producer who emigrated at a young age to Amsterdam, already known for the previous (and decidedly more hyped) "Trans Balkan Express" (with two tracks on the Borat OST, indeed). Popov throws so much stuff into the pot that it's really difficult to pin this release down to a specific genre, which is a good thing: it means it's creative music, art, no clichés.
"OMFO is a bandit in time and space, transforming ancient melodies into music for cosmonauts and spaceships" reads a note in the booklet. To do this, German relies on the support of the master Uwe Schmidt, who, surprised by his productions (close to the idea of electronic/Latin/rumba that animates some of his projects, particularly Señor Coconut, Lisa Carbon, Midiport) [but decidedly towards a less exotic and more east-oriented concept], decides to get involved in the project. His touch, his weird spirit, and his glitchy brain are certainly felt!
Folklore is therefore the main element of Popov's idea, and together with his crew of loyal musician-singers (besides Uwe, of course), he mainly navigates through gypsy territories, Balkan tradition, and clearly electronics. Many eastern instruments, plenty of brass and string instruments, mandolins, playful synths, vocoder, and talkbox scattered throughout. A sound that draws from dub as well as from synth-pop, Kraftwerk-style electro to disco music, and again idm, Russian polka, ska, downtempo, electropop. All this on an absolutely non-serious, indeed playful and irreverent, sometimes madcap backdrop.
Thus the synths from space, sick synths, Blue Monday-like basslines, and old-school sound effects patent a sort of electro-balkan-vintage-discomusic on "Choban In Space" and "Shepherd Disco". The most classic taar is juxtaposed with idm breaks ("Jok De Doi"), while gypsy marches and Russian polkas are modernized with electro-futuristic rhythms: "Oxamit" and "Flujerash" pair minimal rhythms with Caucasian brass, "Drunk 'n' Space" even features a dub bridge and brilliant processed brass, "Tequila Gang Bang" is a sort of tropical-ska-polka-gypsy-dance [?!]). Quite the mess, no doubt, after all where there's Schmidt, you should never expect anything conventional. Like the ragga-dub-tango of "Orbital Hora", "Utomljonnoje Solntse", or the rumba-fusion of "Azerbaijan", always with Balkan instruments as the main riff.
Pairings that might seem impossible or with at least dubious results, yet it must be admitted Popov and Schmidt do a good job giving it a logical sense. Rhythms reminiscent of 80s video games and primordial electro keyboards accompany the traditional singing of "Dagistan" and the vocoderized one of "Voskresenie", with modern synths emulating the fast (and old as the world) succession of rising and falling chords of brass-oriented gypsy music.
Not as futuristic as all the backstory and concept would suggest, with its thousand prefaces in the booklet, about Gagarin, shepherds, Laika, the new world. It is still an interesting and very original work, which unfortunately gets a bit lost on the sung tracks. Recommended tracks: "Jok De Doi" - "Flujerash"! 4.5/5
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