How to Live 100 Years

This is one of those rare, great, versatile albums that works in almost any situation. Moody enough to chill with, funky enough for driving, groovy enough for the dancefloor, you get the picture. It is almost impossible to catagorise, deep house or tech-house, who knows, who cares, what matters is it is of superb quality but then Omid has never let me down. A production carrying the 16b name is guaranteed excellence. If you want a point of reference then perhaps you ought to think in the region of Circulation's classic 'Colours' albums, yep, it's that good. If quality electronic music with an emotional aspect is your bag then this album needs to be in your collection along with the equally brilliant debut, 'Sounds From Another Room'.

16b delivers us his 2nd album, this time on Hooj Records. His first, Sounds From Another Room, is now a deleted deep house classic and this looks like it may even go the same way with Hooj having all sorts of difficulties at the moment.Ever since teaming up with Deep Dish for a remix on his Falling single from his first album, Omid 16b has had a certain Deep Dish pump creep into his electronic jazz house sound. Punchier percussion, echoing claps, dark progressive moods ... in fact alot of his tracks and remixes have become classics for the likes of Digweed, Sasha, Deep Dish, Danny Howell (who always seems to have a place for him on his mix CDs), all the big guns essentially. So what does How To Live In 100 Years give us. The opener Inbetween Your Choice paints a wonderfully chilled electronic breakbeat picture more like 16b of old, and then moving into the club biggie Escape (Driving To Heaven) featuring Deep Dish's mix engineer Morel on vocals, you definately get the feeling that Omid has created an album for listening and chilling rather than going hands in the air crazy for. Escape has its echoing 16b housebeats replaced with a nice chilled yet pacy electro break, a nice touch PLUS breathing life into a track of old, kind of a 'for the album exclusive'. Keep On Changing Shape is more like the clubbier 16b that we're used to at the moment, this little deep electronic house groover is no doubt inspired by the Changing Shape EP on Hooj's Airtight label, nice and deep. De-Org Song keeps the same deep electronic house vibe going while Doubt adds some vocals into the mix which ends up sounding like US House gone electronic, nice if you've got fond memories of US house music of old. Colours then breaks up the clubby portion of the album so far with some chilled downtempo beats, gentle vocodered vocals, very Global Underground friendly deep synths. The Room is the only track I couldn't really get into here, a hypnotic repetative acid house groove, looping over and over again ... still, willing to give this one time. We Will Again! is more chilled ambience, think of the likes of Global Communication's 76:14 and you'll be in the right direction. Virus, although not released as a single, appears to be the big fave of all that I know from the album. Deep electronica, gorgeous synths and an almost Beloved-esque vocal ... its a great track pure and simple. Behind The Face is a 16b track from the Airtight label, one that I picked up originally mainly because it was refreshing in a market that was saturated in epic trance, quality electronica without being utter guff trance. A reprise of Colours finishes off the album nicely.All in all its an album that I found best for listening even though there are some lovely deep uptempo house moments on it. Its a quality album and no-one sounds like 16b so its quite unique. 16b is also enjoying being right at the centre of danceland at the moment with his Sexonwax label and The Idiots guise finding its way into alot of DJs boxes (just check Danny Howells recent 24:7) ... check this album out and find out why.

Now sometimes(or a lot as I do) you take risks on amazon with buying CD's which you have never heard off but go on either peoples recommendations OR as I do 'if you like this, you like this' section of amazon, and this album was a prime example...Having read up on it and seeing the list of DJ's with whom this man is associated I was expecting an awful lot and when it turned up I hurried to whirl it onto the CD player..I gave it a listen through and then another and then selected tracks and now although it is in the CD player..it is being playeed less and less...Its not to say that this album is particulary bad becuase it is and there is some good stuff on it..its just that it is neither a knock you back and say blimey I must phone my mates at once and get them to buy it...it is really an ineffectual album, which meandours along..Buy this for an album where you want something to skip in and out of, but dont expect it to blow you away neither!

A masterpiece, one of my top10 favorites of all times, Omid Nourizadeh at his best. This was a golden era of deep progressive sound, with stars such as Deep Dish, Hernan Cattaneo and many others at their apogee, and I'll never forget those days. "How To Live 100 Years" is sampled in Omid's original progressive/trancy/deep sound and runs in breakz/chillout rhythms/ambience with stunning Morel's and other artists' vocals. Make sure you don't miss best tracks from this album which in my opinion are Inbetween Your Choice, Escape (though Omid Full Vocal Mix is even better than original version on this CD), Keep On Changing Shape, Doubt (though I prefer Instrumental version to vocal mix that you can find on this CD), Behind The Face and Colours Reprise (one of the most beautiful chillout trance accapellas ever, as rightfully pointed out below). Njoy!

Omid is excellent!

I heard 16B's remix of a Natasha Atlas' song and it was phenomenal!Deep, melodic, spacious.How to Live 100 Years, HOWEVER, has the same production values,but is pretty shallow and has no hooky melodies.