15 posts tagged “soul”
Parallel Universe
The Remix Album
4 Hero is one of those outfits that just does not stumble. I have been cutting through Parallel Universe and The Remix Album all morning and I have to say I never get tired of some of these cuts.
I am damn fond of their remixes of I am The Black Gold of the Sun by Nuyorican Soul, and Goldie's Inner City Life (of which I also recommend finding the acoustic remake sung by Jhelisa). An especially sumptuous and ambitious rework is the classic jazz standard Naima by John Coltrane that builds interview samples in the intro with a slack and phat vamp built from a splicing of Tyner and Jones drum and piano parts, and letting the bulk of the horn work remain intact.
Outstanding jungle/soul goodness.
Hunter Files
2004 - G-Stone
G-Stone is the label of Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister, and its releases are few, far between, and all listenable. This is no exception. Wherever they found Rodney Hunter, bless those nutty Austrians for doing so.
RH is a crisp, slack plate of tasty cuts that connects between the elegant trip-hop and acid jazz of Kruder & Dorfmeister and the chilled sounds of artists on Naked Music or Compost labels.
Delicious synth-bass, echo effects on vocal samples, bits of dub, and syncopated beats, and just an overall balanced layer-cake of soultronic sounds.
Check out the dubwise Find It, the lush Is This Your Body, the dance floor configured Electric Lady, and supaheadnoddin' Work That Body.
And the highlight for me in Hunter's You're Not Alone is hearing an extrapolation of Herbie Hancock's Butterfly, which is a favorite of mine.
Chandalismo Ilustrado
2006 Lovemonk
This is one of a long list of artists I discovered by taking the sage advice of the always on point (even when it is way off with typos) Straight No Chaser.
Gecko Turner is apparently short catchy moniker for a very long Spanish named fellow who breeds catchy, breezy grooves with some Iberian charm. His music is not fonky as much as keep a multilingual laid back 70s retro lean with bits of sampladelic hip-hop, bossa nova, and chilled latin pop.
It is pretty derivative stuff in a lot of ways, but it is done often quite well; like a Nil Lara/Ed Motta collaboration of Marvin Gaye and War covers produced by Stuart Matthewman before he went full-bore Cottonbelly.
I think my favorite cut is Afrobeatnik, which sounds like Nigerian High Life meets East LA circa 1979.
And for some reason his tunes always make me think of Freddie Prinze Sr.
Sapphire
2006 Cash Money
I really wanted to like this. Really, yo. But like its predecessor La Dona, it just lacks something that makes the whole thing fall short. To her credit, Teena Marie still has an impeccable voice and has lost none of the sass that characterized her early heyday as a protege of Rick James.
Or maybe it is my affection for the quirks of that period that make hearing her in this "updated" (read: largely faceless currently en-vogue gangsta R&B set of backdrops) scenario that I just can't dig. It is also a little too reliant on half-worked mid-tempo and slow-jams, and I am admittedly a fan of up-tempo TM.
That is not to say the album is bad. It is probably at least a notch or two above a lot of what is on radio these days, but it is several notches below what I would expect from the woman who gave us Square Biz, Lovergirl, and almost the entire Irons in the Fire album.
The idiot dancing brigade aside, the woman has an immaculate set of pipes,that do not seem to have diminished in power or control in three decades. She is the only person who I think can rationally compete with Aretha for both technique and musical ability across genres.
I have not really spoken as to my feelings on the passing of James Brown last Christmas, but I think now I should, after reading this article on what other artists (including Vernon Reid, Aretha Franklin and the RZA) had to say of his impact.
I knew who he was at a young age, but it was in my mid to late teens that I worked in a furniture store and on the showfloor was an expensive showpiece; a true 45 RPM vinyl single playing jukebox. I cannot recall any of the singles on it save one, I Feel Good by James. That song, while probably his most well known, was not the one that stuck in my head. It was the flipside, Cold Sweat. A bold, charged slice of funky power; it is still one of my favorite Brown jams.
By the time I really noticed him he was well past his prime, but even cuts like Living in America had swagger. That still did not stop me from borrowing the box set Star Time and dubbing all four cd's onto TDK cassettes and then immediately trying to absorb some of that Mojo through my ear canals. It was an intersting exploration of what led to what I was already getting heavy into and would later become enemored with: Parliament-Funkadelic, Acid Jazz, Soul, and Hip-Hop.
Unlike todays singing/dancing entertainers (read: Britney Spears and the like) James was actually musically visionary and as a performer was unflappable. he did not need extravagant sets and could go from zero to thermonuclear with just flash of a breakbeat and enough open floor to do the splits and lean his mic. His presence in his peak was magnetic.
Rest in Peace James.
Well, I am making today Mondo Grosso Day, because I am pretty much listening to most of their catalog in one sitting. You get in those moods from time to time,where you want a lot of one thing. Mr. Grosso (real name: Shinichi Osawa) has been an acolyte of disco informed house, r&b and acid jazz mixtures since the early 1990s, and sometimes he sounds painfully conventional.But when he doesn't, his work is really never bad, and quite often -as of the album MG4 onwards- exceptionally good. Dude be funky, and has the best outsider grasp of Brazilian pop dynamics since United Future Organization (what is it with the Japanese fascination with Samba and Tropicalismo?)
Many years ago I was driving and on the stoplight at Lafayette and Lewis in town when Prince's Lady Cab Driver came on the radio...it has remained a favorite ever since.
I was trying out Pandora and after putting in some starting selections it played The Time as a lead in to LCD, and followed by Cameo Sounds about right.
A Time To Love
2005 Motown
So I will be brief; this was his first full studio album in a decade and it is his best output since at least 1987s Skeletons. It has a few hints of his classic period, with enough of his smooth jazz leanings prevalent since In Square Circle to keep quiet storm and old skool radio happy. That being said, it is not on the same level as that classic material.
I suggest something radical, and forget any attempts to work current R&B radio. It is clear based on this and your last live album that you still have talent and skill to spare, but have shackeled it. Go get folks from the acid jazz, nu-jazz and neo soul communities who have all drawn heavily from your best releases, and make a truly timeless album of your own. Call Me'Shell Ndegeocello, Jhelisa, the guys from Groove Collective, maybe Jazzanova, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Vernon Reid, and get someone like Bill Laswell or Gilles peterson to produce.
History (and my ears) will be kinder.
