Try as you might, you probably could not get more West Coast than Opio and Free the Robots’s new California coast-spanning collaboration “Blown Sum Smoke”.
Touting a languid, laid-back sensibility combined with hazy synths and dazed, deep rhythm grooves, there’s a hint of jazz and a murmur of psych in FTR’s woozy production. What’s most impressive though is his ability to straddle a span of decades within barely four minutes. Dotted by weezing synths and echoey accents, he still manages to demonstrate his deep roots in classic 90s G-funk production, as his beats slink and slide beneath Opio’s signature drawl-funk flow.
One-fourth of the Oakland-based Souls of Mischief group and member of Del the Funkee Homosapien’s legendary Hieroglyphics collective, he’s a bedrock of the Bay Area scene. And while it’s a collaboration spanning both generations and the long Highway 101 drive, it’s no surprise that said tour will bring them right back home.
Opio x Free the Robots Tour
July
17 Seattle @ Barbazoa
18 Portland @ The Hawthorne Theatre
20 Santa Cruz @ The Catalyst Club
23 Los Angeles @ Low End Theory (Opio)
24 San Francisco @ Feightsf
