Opiuo aka Oscar Davey-Wraight’s recent Butternut Slap EP series is something else. His intricate and diverse production could be described as being a funky trip through The Matrix on smack, but there’s one element that’s ever-present, and that’s ‘the groove’.
His 2008 remix of Benny Tones’ Fire Fly was his first experimentation with downtempo grooves, where he brought the BPMs down to 93 to create a chill out vibe.
“That was the first time I’d slowed down my sound,” he explains. “I’d been more into making break beats and electro, 4/4, a bit of drum and bass. But yeah that’s the first time I experimented with slowing the groove. Emotion is also important to my work, but I think the groove for me, is more resonating and if there’s no groove, it doesn’t work.”
The Butternut Slap series, a follow up to his critically acclaimed Slurp And Giggle LP of 2010, has been blitzing it on Beatport and has resulted in Opiuo recently taking out five categories in the UK Glitch Hop Awards. The series was released as three EPs over the last year with a dope remix version featuring seven producers including Infected Mushroom having just dropped.
“At the time I was experimenting a lot, so I knew my sound was evolving. I was also going through quite a traumatic time with one of my ears and having big operations just previously to that series,” Davey-Wraight says of his choice to release the work as a series of EPs rather than an LP.
“I knew I wanted to change things up and experiment, so if I’d decided to do an album, it would have taken me a year to write and during that time, my sound would have changed a lot. The EPs have given me the chance to do what I want.”
Davey-Wraight has taken on many remixes, but his reworkings are artistic and original, leaving no room for accusations of subscribing to commercial remix culture.
His remixes are as diverse as his own original productions, having produced a cinematic remix for Disney’s Tron Uprising soundtrack, a glitch hop version of The Upbeats Diffused and a re-rub of Infected Mushroom’s U R So Fucked.
“At the moment, I’m getting asked to do remixes constantly, but I’m working on a new album and I think it’s really important to not become known as just a remix producer and to keep some balance.
“People really like to hear your take on things but I think at the moment, there’s a lot of people just working on remixing pre-existing songs and trying to hype themselves up that way, using the popularity of that already existing song, but there’s no real quality behind what they’re doing a lot of the time. I love it when people doing a really good remix and then put out an album that’s also really awesome.”
Alongside currently working on a full length album and touring the world constantly, Davey-Wraight has transformed his already semi-live solo show into a six-piece outfit, blending the organic with the digital.
“I really want it to have a really live feel,” he says. “It’s all Opiuo music with parts being played on trumpets, guitars, keys or drums, blasting a much more organic feel and has a lot of raw live energy. It becomes a bit more human.”
BY JO CAMPBELL
