What they see is
what you get

>>Omnikrom turn your head into a TV set
with their graphic gabbing

AFTER THESE MESSAGES: Omnikrom

By JACK OATMON

Local rap trio Omnikrom were weaned on pop culture like the rest of us, under a landslide of crass cartoons, Public Enemy albums, obnoxious infomercials, Top 40 radio and the saccharine cacophony of the mid-’90s Euro-trash/new jack swing crossover dance craze. MCs Jeanbart and Linso Gabbo also cut their teeth rhyming like a lot of teenage boys did in those years. They traded phrases, recorded them on cassette over pop beats and refined their style to emulate their idols.

“I remember driving around in the car in the middle of the summer with the windows rolled all the way up,” recalls Gabbo, “because I was listening to my rhymes on the stereo and I didn’t want anyone to know it was me.”

In later years, as they hit the clubs and got turned on to new sounds, they formed Omnikrom’s predecessor, être Abstrait, and the teenage fantasy of being well-known rappers inched a tiny smidgen closer. They then met producer Figure8 and started laying down tracks as Omnikrom, informed by a vast gamut of experimental hip hop à la Def Jux, “all the club rap and techno bangers we heard,” and any other beats they could get their mitts on.

“We’ve always been into different kinds of experimental music,” explains Jeanbart, “so that’s inspired us to incorporate many different styles that we like.”

“Of course, other rappers like all kinds of different music,” adds Gabbo, “but they don’t necessarily want to integrate it all into their own stuff. They’re making a more precise style than us. But when we’re influenced by something, we immediately work it into our music.”

Living in the major cultural liaison between the Parisian electro-pop explosion and the gritty, uptempo crunk and B-more fads south of the border, the regional nuances they’ve drawn on are eclectic to the extreme, as evidenced on their recent album Trop Banane. But within that remains something that is undeniably local—the lyrics. Their chin-tickling slang and lilting, lurching rants immediately holler Quebec at any listener. Not only that, but their visual choice of content is a vital part of their quirky style.

“We invent a lot of expressions and we have a certain style of lyrics. It’s about images,” says Jeanbart, touching on a topic he’s obviously considered many times. Here, the span of time they’ve gabbed together shows. When any interesting topic comes up, they bounce ideas around the table with such entertaining turns of phrase and shifting rhythm that it’s almost a shame to translate the interview into English.

“We put more emphasis on the flow and the images than creating complex sentences,” Gabbo says, creeping smoothly up on his point and them hammering it in with a rapid blast of words. “We want there to almost be a television show going on in people’s heads as they listen to us.”

“The media of entertainment that influences the most people are TV and the Internet,” muses Jeanbart with his enormous, signature grin, then he looks at me, almost laughing, and concludes, “so we’re like that, only in music.”

With Cuizinier, Orgasmic and Jeune Chilly Chill
at le National on Saturday, March 8,
9 p.m., sold out