Tabs Out | Jacoti Sommes – Travel Time | Tabs Out Cassette Podcast

Jacoti Sommes – Travel Time

If there was one thing I wanted 2020 to bring us, we dreamers of glorious hope, it was the promise of new music on Orange Milk Records. That’s it. If 2020 is remembered for nothing other than new OM tunes, I’m gonna call that a win. And so far, we’ve completely, utterly, unabashedly won. Because hey, not only do we have new Orange Milk tunage to sink our fangs into, but we have an artist BRAND NEW to the label’s roster: Jacoti Sommes. Glorious hope meet eternal promise, and all becomes light and ascends!

I don’t know what that even means, but let’s take a listen to “Travel Time,” the ecstatic and electrifying OM debut of Columbus, Ohio, producer. First, Sommes is an OBVIOUS fit for the label, his electro-funk epics slotting in nicely with OM’s more dancier releases. And this isn’t even obvious at first, as opener “Mars” smears beatless galactic watercolors of synth tone, an introduction as perfect as it is unlike anything else on the album. But it’s only setting the mood, a mood right only for an electric urban god watching over the city, ready to free its drudging denizens to flights of euphoric escape. Yeah, “Travel Time” actually 100% does that and goes there and is am are.

And then it drops in. Easy at first, giving us a taste of the Aphex Twin chops Sommes possesses, but then leaning into its true calling: a future-funk odyssey of universal proportions. Indeed, Sommes channels, ahem, “da funk” through a Daft Punk lens, electrifying his disco-fication down slippery basslines and chiming melodies, spinning glowing strobe stompers at a virtuosic pace. Yeah, Sommes has definitely listened to some Ohio Players and some Parliament, but he’s also jamming Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, jamming his crowd-pleasing tunes with complicated composition. And everything’s delightfully futuristic, dreaming of a time when electronics and life forms coexist in a smooth utopia.

Does this make “Travel Time” the party anthem record for the Orange Milk set? You better believe it. Come for electronics, stay for the groove that makes your booty move. Jacoti Sommes has got you covered. Hope is rekindled, we are released!

This baby drops on Valentine’s Day, so get some chocolates and some bubbly and pop this thing on for romance. Try “Push On” while you wait.