ALBUM OF THE DAY
Various Artists, “Homecore! Miami All-Stars”
By James Gui · December 07, 2022

As a gateway between the United States and Latin America, Miami has played a crucial role in facilitating Afro-Latin articulations of the Black Atlantic. We have Miami bass to thank for funk carioca—DJ Battery Brain’s electro-fueled “8 Volt Mix” provided the rhythmic skeleton around which Brazilian funk producers built the infamous tamborzão beat. And Miami’s booty music developed in tandem with other regional forms like dancehall, New Orleans bounce, and Baltimore club, coalescing into the new hybrids of jook and Florida fast. Omnidisc’s new V/A compilation Homecore! Miami All​-​Stars may look excessive—44 tracks!—but the record is a true representation of “the connective tissue that is Miami,” as the album notes put it.

The sheer genre diversity that makes up Miami’s musical tissue warrants the three-and-a-half-hour runtime. Jook, heavy on R&B samples, might be the genre most suited for crying in the club; Tre Oh Fie demonstrates the style in all its syncopated emotion on “4AM,” while Fwea-Go Jit infuses healthy amounts of booty into a plaintive guitar and vocal sample via Jersey club kicks. Jesse Perez evokes the early electro that birthed Miami bass in “Pocket Full of Ones,” a no-frills tool that slinks around the classic kick-snare pattern. MJ Nebreda’s take on reggaetón in “Arquitecto” is airy and ephemeral, two-and-a-half minutes of speedy dembow and angelic croon cruising around 140 beats per minute. Linking booty and brain, the heavy groove in Sohn Jamal’s “TQ Visa” demonstrates the producer’s facility with making IDM go dumb. There’s plenty of techno to go around, too: Miami Community Radio founder Nicholas G. Padilla brings the bleep in “Zone,” while Deroboter’s “Cid” takes it to murky depths, and Elias Garcia hypnotizes with “Radiant.”

The compilation also showcases the UK-U.S. fusions bubbling in Miami of late. INVT has been at the forefront of these explorations: “Dassit” is a psychedelic trip through broken beat, jungle, and dub, chopping up breaks in a spacey vortex before the bass weight hits about halfway through and brings everything back down to earth. Not to be outdone, Nick León and Bitter Babe provide low-end meditations of their own on “Sapo” and “Gimme” respectively; their amalgamation of rhythms from both sides of the Atlantic brings out the common DNA of dubstep and reggaetón. TIDUR. and SEL.6’s twin takes on 2-step complement each other, the former bringing the swing on “You And I” and the latter crafting a heady cadence on “Drop In2 The Pain.” Liquifying the breaks, Shinobi crafts a classic drum & bass soundscape in “Stratus,” while Near Dark finds the common ground between jungle and drill on “Red Keycard.” Homecore! is as thick with different styles as it is with local Miami talent, an index of the scene’s continued creativity.

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