To say that Omar Velasco's debut album has been a long time coming is something of an understatement. 'Dreamy', 'provocative', 'sensuous' and 'captivating' are just some of the adjectives that are being used to describe this inveterate artist's work, honed over years of playing on the road - from bars to concert halls, rehearsal rooms to top-flight studios. Still only thirty, Velasco has finally tapped into his Muse and emerged with a record that truly reflects his unique sensibility. ***** Each of the ten songs on the album have their origins in Velasco's nomadic childhood. Born to parents from entirely different cultures, Velasco was always on the move: from a tiny fishing village off the coast of Mexico, to a tipi in a hippy commune, to an ancient town in the heart of the Aztec kingdom. “A child only knows what he lives,” says Velasco.“This to me was the norm.” With a Mexican mother and American father, Velasco found himself in the middle of two separate cultures. “I'd find myself trying to explain one point of view to the other, to create some harmony out of their dissonant languages.” It was music that helped to bridge the gap. “The music in our household was profuse and eclectic: jazz, blues, classical, pop, afro-Cuban, flamenco, folk. Now, when I make my own music, I innately strive for unity and harmony, for the redemptive quality of disparate influences.” And it shows. Earthy and acoustic at times, sophisticated and artfully arranged at others, Velasco's debut album has a dream-like sensibility as it meanders through the musical landscape. Song after song, Velasco tackles a brave and bracing range of themes: spirituality (Snowy Water), family life (Family Tree), sleeplessness (Dreamtube), the plight of the American Indian (Great Western City), the pitfalls of modern society (Modern Life), the 'charlatans in power' (Secaucus). The range is huge but there is a real intimacy here, both in the writing and the performing. The timbre of Velasco's voice – coupled with his nimble lyrical phrasing - conjures up the best of James Taylor, Michael Franks, Paul Simon. Where did Velasco get the impetus to make this record? “I'd been playing and singing for many years. Then, one day, I met a musician named Jonathan Wilson at a session at Capital Records in Hollywood. We became friends and he invited me to join his band.” Four years on the road with Jonathan, opening for acts like Tom Petty, Wilco, and Neil Young, proved a fertile time for Velasco. “Jonathan has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things music. So it begins to rub off. I learned what it takes to reach greater depths in music, in art. That's what had been missing for me, and what I then learned through observation and experience.” The album was recorded over the course of a year and a half at Jonathan Wilson's Echo Park studio. Drawing on many influences and events in his life, Velasco began concocting a musical quilt. “A collage of songs” is what he calls it - “all different in subject and treatment, not at all conceptual. Kind of like Stevie Wonder's 'Songs in the Key of Life'.” For example, here's what he says about Family Tree: “This was a liberating song to write, in that – if you come from a tightly-knit family, it's a very taboo subject to broach: expressing anguish about over-bearing-ness, trying to figure out where your family ends and where you begin.” About Secaucus: “During Hurricane Sandy, I was stranded on tour in a hotel in Secaucus, New Jersey. The rawness of the storm felt like an indictment of the way we live today, with our false leaders and our short-sighted, greedy motives.” Harmony, CA, by contrast, celebrates the time he went to Ojai to shake off depression. “The song came out as a sort of salve for myself.” Not all of the songs are born out of trouble. Golden Child is, he says, “a good old-fashioned love song”, while Water to Wine he describes as “an ode to the elusive muse... an invocation, a courting.” Most of all – as the song Great Big House attests – the album is a wildly enjoyable meditation on “the awe-inspiring and flabbergasting immensity of life and music, like a house with an infinite number of rooms in which to lose oneself.”