In 1992, Switzerland selected the song “Soleil Soleil” to represent the country in that year’s Eurovision contest, the annual event where European countries play out diplomatic misgivings with one another by voting against their bad pop music. Performed by Geraldine Olivier, the song was eventually disqualified by the Swiss and replaced by something else.
This story most likely has nothing to do with Osaka’s OMEGABOY, who last week changed his moniker to Soleil Soleil. His first song under that name, “To Night,” doesn’t sound anything like “Soleil Soleil” nor would it get any votes on Eurovision, even if Austria backed it. Like a lot of OMEGABOY’s recent works, “Soleil Soleil” hinges on the sliced-up vocal samples, here a female voice murmuring things like “it’s party time” and seemingly ripped out of a disco or house record. At times the sample sounds a little uneven – sometimes the voice stops abruptly, a party foul if there ever was an audio party foul – but the real strength of “To Night” is the vocals. Soleil Soleil has been getting better at making fuzzy electronic dance tracks that actually sound like they could be played by a DJ rather than by a MacBook in a bedroom. Would like to hear just an instrumental of this. Listen below.