Not God. Finom

A band (duo) that keeps changing its name will have a hard time to build a great career. I would never have guessed that I was about to listen to the new album of Ohmme, when I put Not God on for the first time. When I listened, the voices certainly rang a bell, but which one? All became clear after reading the bio. Finom is the new name under which Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart make their music together. Listening closely to Not God I realised that Ohmme must have been one of the bands that influenced one of my absolute favourite new bands, Wet Leg.

Checking on the blog, I was surprised to find that I had not written the review. Erwin Zijleman wrote about 'Fantasize Your Ghost' in 2020. I'll admit, it is not often that I truly like the artists he writes about, with Ohmme it was love at first hear.

That love is continued with Not God. The album went down well immediately and from there only kept growing. Finom is able to provide its songs with a mysterious sheen. Where nothing is what it appears to be. The two voices and the way the two women use their voices is the first explanation for that mystery. It is almost as if the voices float over the music, detached from earth and everything coming with living on our planet. The music underscores this with ease. Take the song 'Naked'. Finom does everything to make the song appear as strange as possible, without resorting to psychedelia. This is a "normal" song and yet it isn't. Everything and everybody is making sure to play their parts and make them sound as good as they can, while the flow of the song is, albeit in a strange way, great, and yet the effect is estranging.

Opening song 'Haircut' is totally upbeat. Again, you will hear how the style of singing of Cunningham and Stewart is clipped. Here you have a part of the explanation why Finom's music has a mysterious and somewhat estranging effect. The music has a tight drums and bass but over it you will hear all sorts of sound clips coming in and going out of the music, while some remain. The result is a very danceable song that is as weird as it it is upbeat. Before you get the wrong idea, I love it. It only shows how hard it is to describe Finom's music and doing it right. It deserves loads of praise.

I am going to mention the second song of the album as well. 'Dirt' is a dreamy ballad and so different from song one and three. 'Dirt' may even be better. It brings me into another world. A world where I can leave the daily trouble and strive behind and just lay myself down on the song and let me carry myself away by it. Put it on repeat endlessly and I may never return from where 'Dirt' takes me. It's beautifully dreamy with soft floating synth sounds and all it takes to have an uninterrupted dream. Until the very end of 'Dirt', where minor hiccups are built in, causing minor ripples in that soft flowing song, providing for a safe escape, so wished.

Not God continues between these two sort of songs. Every songs has something extra and a special feature or more than one, with the title song as an absolute, almost epic, highlight. I haven't played 'Fantasize Your Ghost' for about one year, I think. Still, I'm nearly sure that this album is so much better. Yesterday 'News Of The Universe' by La Luz was lauded on the blog as a so much better album that its previous already very good album. Today that happens to Finom (Ohmme). This is an album that everyone should undergo and emerge victoriously. Not God is a great album, period!

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order Not God here:

https://finom.bandcamp.com/album/not-god