Mirror Gazer
Onuinu
Rocket Science
Records.
SCQ Rating: 76%
It’ll come as no
surprise to learn that Dorian Duvall, mastermind of Onuinu, has an eclectic
taste in music. Listening to Duvall’s debut Mirror Gazer can be likened to
tangling oneself in several records sequenced to play and coexist perfectly.
There’s no single root; instead Duvall pits R&B grooves against house
beats, synth-heavy swells on top of hip hop beats. And although these distinct
capacities risk getting mangled by Onuinu’s extroverted ambition, Mirror Gazer
perseveres as an outlandishly fun forty minutes.
Distinguishing which
tracks on this debut flirt with disaster varies by the supply of ideas and
layers Duvall’s tossing at the wall. On the tracks where everything sticks,
such as “A Step In the Right Direction” and “Last Word”, Onuinu wipes away the
clutter in favour of prominent grooves that inspire an insatiable momentum.
Other instances, like “Happy Home”, can require several listens to fully weed
through, its various gears overwhelming what is, at its core, a good tune. And
that’s the learning curve with Mirror Gazer: the compositional focus, while
tight throughout, is occasionally masked by what sounds like a kitchen-sink
approach. With time, the disc proves more fine-tuned than any slapdash
technique with Onuinu ultimately holding the reins.
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