Omar-S: Detroit's most prolific solo techno project

Alexander Omar Smith has run FXHE Records out of Detroit since 2003, and he has done it almost entirely by himself. As Omar-S, he produces the music, presses the records, and puts them out on his own label, a working method he has kept up for more than two decades. The catalog is one of the deepest in active Detroit dance music.

Smith started FXHE in 2003 as a way to release what he was making, working from an MPC sampler and a job that paid the bills. In a 2023 interview with Rolling Stone marking the label's twentieth anniversary, he described the early stretch plainly: "I was just working at my job and making tracks." The records moved fast once they landed in stores. "Record stores wanted anything I did," he told Rolling Stone. "I used to call them and play tracks over the phone."

The early FXHE twelve-inches were pressed in small runs with handwritten labels, and they reached specialty shops in the United Kingdom and Germany not long after they appeared. The sound is raw and funky, leaning toward Detroit house, and built on analog gear rather than studio polish. That roughness reads as intent, not budget.

The album record backs up the prolific reputation. "Just Ask the Lonely" arrived in 2005 (Discogs catalog AOS-5000). "It Can Be Done But Only I Can Do It" followed in 2011 and remains the most-cited full-length, a mix of new productions and tracks that had only been on vinyl before. "The Best" came in 2016 to 2017. The early singles now trade as collector items on the secondary market.

Smith has been openly skeptical of how the wider industry measures success. He told Rolling Stone he backs the underground, and put the contrast bluntly: "To an industry-type person, if you're not making $5 to $10 million a year, you ain't shit." The structural choices match that stance. He owns the label, controls the pressings, and keeps the operation close.

Conant Gardens runs through the story. Smith took over a building his grandfather built in the 1950s and turned it into the Conant Gardens Party Store, a home base that doubled as a space for events. He has used FXHE to back younger Detroit artists, releasing and championing names like John FM and HiTech, who have appeared on his records and used his space to throw shows. OB Ignitt and Luke Hess are among the other producers who have featured on FXHE releases over the years.

The label stays a closed network by design, and Smith has stayed in Detroit. The catalog is large and uneven on purpose, too sprawling to anthologize cleanly. The next FXHE record will arrive when it arrives.