Most musicians talk about feel. Omer B has two places to look for it: six strings and a steering wheel.
Splitting his time between Atlanta and Tel Aviv, Omer B has spent years building the kind of career that resists a neat description. He plays funk. He plays rock, blues, gospel, pop, and jazz. Ask most guitarists to name their genre, and you get one word; ask Omer, and you get a list, because he has actually done the work in all of them. That range is rarer than it sounds. Plenty of players can imitate a style. Far fewer can sit down in six of them and sound like they belong.
He is also a great race driver.
It reads like a fun biographical footnote until you think about what the two disciplines actually demand. Both are built on an enormous amount of unglamorous, invisible repetition — the same corner, the same passage, over and over, until the body stops asking the brain for permission. Both are judged in fractions of a second. And both punish the same instinct: the urge to force it. Push too hard into a corner, and you lose the exit. Push too hard into a phrase, and you lose the groove. The people who are good at either one have learned that going faster usually means relaxing.
Which brings us to the new single.
“Bending Time” is a guitar showcase, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. This is Omer B putting his playing at the center of the frame — the tone, the phrasing, and, more tellingly, the restraint. The temptation with an instrumental track is to fill every bar, to treat silence like a mistake. Omer resists it. He leaves room. The lines breathe, land, and get out of the way, and the track is far more effective for it. There is speed here when the song wants speed, but it never arrives just to prove it can.
The title earns its double meaning without anyone having to point at it.
Joining him on the track is Oz Noy, appearing as a featured guest. Noy is an Israeli-American guitarist who has been based in New York since 1996, with more than ten albums as a bandleader and a shelf of Guitar Player readers’ poll wins — Best Guitar Riff on a Record, Best New Talent, and Best “Out There” Guitar Player. He has recorded with Will Lee, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Lukather, Eric Johnson, Warren Haynes, and Chick Corea. He is, in short, the guitarist other guitarists call.
That he turned up on this record says something worth saying once: players at that level are careful about whose music they attach their name to.
The video is the fastest way in. It’s a straightforward document of the playing, which is exactly right — there’s no need to dress up a performance that holds attention on its own. Watch it once for the song. Watch it a second time for what Omer’s hands are doing.
For an independent artist releasing on his own terms, “Bending Time” is a confident piece of work: unhurried, well-played, and completely uninterested in fitting into a category. Whether that comes from the guitar or from the track, Omer B seems to have figured out the same thing in both places — the fastest line is rarely the one you muscle your way through.
“Bending Time (feat. Oz Noy)” is out now. Stream or save it here.