Groove Cruise celebrated their 30th sail this October, traveling from San Diego to Ensenda, aboard the Norwegian Pearl. The festival had us all saying how we’re never going home, with the culture, people, and music all coming together to create a magical experience that has us fevershily waiting to get back on the boat. Amongst the heavily stocked roster, OMNOM had two performances at both Papas and Beers in Ensanda, Mexico as well as the Pooldeck, that reaffirmed our love for the rising producer. He has only been in the scene for a couple years and OMNOM is already making a place for himself amongst other beloved tech house artists. After releasing “Fo Free” on Dirtybird Records, everyone has been quick to pay attention to what he puts out next. He has played across many festivals within the past year, including CRSSD, Electric Forest, and Dirtybird Campout. Just recently he has put out a collab track with Sage Armstrong, “WAIT… (I think I Lost My Mind) that has quickly reached steep streaming numbers.
OMNOM showed us his many sides, like putting on a dark, chill mix in Ensenda’s most well known club, Papas and Beers, like his mix of Dusky’s “Songs of Phase” to revving us up during the School Day Parade. He let out his G house side with his mix of The Game’s “This is How We Do” before throwing out Dirtybird love with his own “Fo Free” and Walker and Royce’s “Love and Marriage”. We got to see Sage Armstrong and OMNOM play together, with Sage rapping his lyrics to their most recent, “WAIT…” as well as Sage Armstrong’s own “100 MPH“.
© Veranmiky
We had a chance to sit down with OMNOM to talk working with Dirtybird, collaborating with Sage Armstrong, his “Secret Menu” playlist, and more. Check out what he had to say below.
RR: Welcome aboard Groove Cruise! Is this your first sail?
OMNOM: Yeah, it’s good to be on the boat! It’s my first cruise in my entire life actually. It’s pretty cool, I haven’t left the buffet the entire time. I’ve just been eating non-stop. I think I’ve only left my room to either play or eat.
RR: So you are fresh off of Dirtybird Campout from last weekend. How was that? Any crazy or fun moments?
OMNOM: Yes! It was awesome. I think it was the best Dirtybird since the first one, as far as the venue goes. This is the best venue they have ever had. I really hope we get to use it again next year.
My favorite moment of the whole festival is probably Bingo after the Family Set. When EPROM won a pogo stick, and then they made him jump on it. He totally ate shit. It was really cool because he’s such a badass producer and performer but seeing him eat shit on a pogo stick was pretty awesome, haha.
RR: What was it like working with the Dirtybird team for “Fo Free”?
OMNOM: I made the track and then I sent it to Walker & Royce. They were the ones that started playing it out everywhere. Eventually, they were like, ‘Hey we’re gonna send this to Barkley, since it’s not signed anywhere’. They played it at East Coast Campout and everyone was like, ‘Oh, what’s this track, what’s this track?’ Barkely heard this and was like, ‘Yeah, let’s sign it.’
RR: So your latest release with Sage Armstrong, “WAIT…”, has been making the rounds for tech house addicts this summer. How was the collaboration process?
OMNOM: Yeah, I heard someone play it this morning at like 6 am, I was like, ‘What the hell?’ Haha. That one can be tough to play in your sets if it’s not a really weird vibe. I’m stoked people are playing it! Sage hit me up and said he’d been digging my tunes and wanted to work together. He lives in Santa Monica and I’m in East L.A. so it was easy to drive over a couple days and work on some tunes. It was good.
RR: Anything that you are especially happy with how the track came out?
OMNOM: I like the way it kinda sounds like him but there are also elements of my sound. That’s what I like in collaborations, you don’t want it so sound like just one guy made it and the other guy was just kinda sitting there. It was both of our styles just meshing together really well.
RR: So your career has quickly taken off since your first debut single, “Crack Tha Whip”, what has been the most exciting thing you have experienced?
OMNOM: Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. I kinda just try to block that one out a little bit, haha. I think meeting all these artists that I have been looking up to these past four or five years. Sometimes they’ll even know who I am before I introduce myself, which is wild. Like Kyle Watson. I met him at Electric Forest and he was with his wife and he goes, ‘Oh this is the “Fo Free” guy,’ and she’s all, ‘Yeah,
yeah!’. Pretty sweet, right? Hopefully I’m not the “Fo Free” guy forever.
RR: Well to be fair, it is a really good song.
OMNOM: Haha, yeah thanks. That one kinda, very much, outweighs my other tracks at the moment in terms of popularity. But, we’ll get there.
RR: Any moment that has been the most unexpected or educational?
OMNOM: That’s tough to say. It’s just little things here and there that you learn not to do anymore. As far as just not losing shit, for example. I have lost so much stuff. I got home from Dirtybird Campout and accidentally threw both of my USB’s in the laundry as soon as I got home, they were in my jacket pocket. I have lost so much stuff. Also have learned a lot about air travel. Learning when to get to the airport, how to pack. All that consistent shit that I still don’t have sometimes.
I’ll have to figure it out eventually, the touring is about to get really crazy this month. I will probably learn a lot more.
RR: What goes into curating your “Secret Menu” playlist on Spotify? How long of you been doing that?
OMNOM: Dope shit! Just music I would never be able to play here or anywhere else. It’s music that I think people should hear either way. It’s stuff I’d never be able to post on my own SoundCloud or anything like that. So now I have a place to show what I’m listening to. I really like EPROM, G Jones, all the bass dudes. I listen to their stuff all the time, but I could never throw their stuff out during my set.
I probably could’ve done it today though. I played “Sandstorm”. There were like ten people here to start, and I played Will Clarke’s, “Can You Funk?”, and I mixed that into the breakdown of “Sandstorm”. Had some fun with it.
RR: How long have you been curating your “Secret Menu”
OMNOM: Only about three weeks. My new manager suggested I started a weekly Spotify Playlist and I was down. It’s been cool so far.
RR: What’s next for you music wise?
OMNOM: I got a track coming out tomorrow on Insomniac Records. It’s one of the first tracks I did on my Hard Summer Mix that I did, it’s one of the most asked about tracks from that mix that I did. It’s called “Methane”, it’s with Zendlo, and I played at Dirtybird Campout and it went off. [Check out his latest release, “Methane” here]. I didn’t think it would fit in my set here at Papas and Beers. Usually you can tell about how I feel about the show I am at through what I’m playing in my sets. Like I will play more OMNOM tracks that are silly and weird when there is a party and everyone is going crazy.
RR: Any cool collaborations in the future?
I got something in the works with Steady Rock, he’s one of my favorite producers right now. Eventually, I’m hoping to get something going with some people who everybody loves. I can’t disclose that just yet. It’s cool to collab but I also really need to get back to making my own stuff too.
RR: Anything you want to talk about or tell fans?
OMNOM: OMNOM fans are the worst the worst fans in the world. What I mean by that is I want people to say that about my fans. I want them to be as notorious like those of Bassnectar. I want them to be known to get wild and have a good time.
We thank OMNOM for taking the time to talk with us. Keep up to date on his latest endeavors through his socials below.
Connect with OMNOM:
https://www.facebook.com/imOMNOM
https://www.twitter.com/imOMNOM
https://soundcloud.com/omnom
https://www.instagram.com/imOMNOM
https://open.spotify.com/imomnom/secretmenu
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