9 posts tagged “deep funk”
I've been spending a lot of my listening time lately back in the 80s and neglecting the funk, so I sought to remedy that today. I started listening to Brownout, the Latin funk band from Austin, and as soon as I heard "African Battle" I was hooked. Deep funk beat, extra percussion, horns, and trombone solos? Yes, please!
My grasp of deep funk has always been of the "I can't define it, but I know it when I hear it" variety, but now I have come up with a working definition: deep funk is funk that pretends P-Funk never happened. How's that? Japan's Osaka Monaurail (named after James Brown's "(It's Not the Express) It's the J.B.'s Monaurail") are deep funk veterans by now, having formed in 1992 "to play the late 60's - early 70's funkies," so they're quite good at it by now. Here's a track from their 2004 album, Thankful:
With a name like The Haggis Horns, they'd better be from Scotland, and indeed they are. You can always trust a band with "Horns" in their name; horns make everything better! Rather than paraphrase what little I know about them, I'll just quote from their booking agency:
The Haggis Horns are one of the best live bands in the game; a brass heavy funk powerhouse that has been rocking clubs up and down the country for years, combining breakbeat funk, soul, hip-hop and afrobeat with the virtuosity of trained jazz musicians. Based around the nucleus of Malcolm Strachan (Trumpet), Jason Rae (Alto Sax) & Atholl Ransome (Tenor Sax) the Haggis Horns (yes, they’re from Scotland) extend to an eight-piece live outfit, featuring Joe Tatton on keys, Morgan Pugh on bass, Ben Barker on Guitar, Sam Bell on percussion and drummer Luke Flowers (Cinematic Orchestra). Debut 7’ Hot Damn! was released in 2005 with new single “Traveller (pts 1 & 2)” following late in 2006 to widespread acclaim.
More recently than that, they've released a full-length CD, also called Hot Damn!, on First Word Records. The Haggis's specialty is their Afrobeat angle; "Tribe Vibes" is almost straight-up Afrobeat, while Afrobeat-style guitar lines run through several of the other songs on the album. They also use more wah-wah on the rhythm guitar than other deep funk bands, for that special 70s action movie feel. The track on the album that grabbed me the most is the last one, "Who's Gonna Take the Weight":
It's probably no coincidence that "Weight" is reminiscent of the godfathers of Scottish funk, the Average White Band:
I get jealous when I google Haggis Horns and find someone's blog entry that says "Went to the Jazz Cafe in London last night with my friend Pete. We saw Haggis Horns & Speedometer, both were awesome and some new CDs will be finding there way into my shopping cart soon." I wanna see shows like that! Waaaaa! At least I've got the Rozatones in town, if only they'd play out more.
From Madrid, Spain come The Sweet Vandals! As a five-piece they are smaller than most deep funk bands, because they lack a horn section. Singer Mayka Edjo makes up for it, though, with a voice that commands attention and would probably drown out a horn section anyway. Here's a long clip from their show at La Maroquinerie in Paris, just last week:
When last I blogged I was trying to decide what to do next from among three choices; I have decided to knock out two of them in this post and save the third for its own, as it is a rarity that I don't want to bury. So continuing the Deep Funk Around the World thread, we come to Poland, where my friend Jeff has been sent to teach the locals how to program. Today's deep funk track is by Big Band Katowice, comprised of student musicians from the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. Their special feature: they are from the 70s! Their sole album, Music for My Friends, was recorded in 1977, so they are interpreting deep funk from a geographical rather than a chronological distance. Here is "Sorcery," which also happens to be the leadoff track on the newish Polish Funk compilation album from Polskie Nagrania:
Sounds like real funk to me! Now the song that the Bamboos reminded me of, it turns out they didn't remind me of it, the Apples did. The way the baritone sax lays down the groove and the other horns play their thing over it made me remember "Hattie Wall" by the World Saxophone Quartet: Julius Hemphill (d. 1995), Oliver Lake, Hamiett Bluiett, and David Murray. In 1987 WEA was trying to build up Elektra Nonesuch as a boutique label, or "special music" as they called it, i.e. music that critics praised but no one bought. They put out a label sampler called Late in the 20th Century (which I think I got at the Record World manager's convention in glamorous Lancaster, PA) that was actually quite good, featuring the Kronos Quartet, John Adams, John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, and others. "Hattie Wall" was included to promote the Quartet's album Dances and Ballads, and while I never did get that album (yet another one to look for), I always loved the song:
"Hattie Wall" really opened my eyes (or ears) to how much you could do with rhythm without using any drums. Other bands have shown me that you can use drums and still have no rhythm, but they are better forgotten.
Two down, that leaves the band-with-a-self-titled-theme-song thread to follow up on, which I may do tomorrow, but probably later.
I'll follow the Deep Funk thread from yesterday's entry in this game of musical association. Traveling down to the bottom of the globe, the Bamboos serve up deep funk in Australia from their home base in Melbourne. (Band website here, MySpace page here.) Their special ingredient is the flute playing of Bruce Sandell, pushed to the fore in "The Bamboos Theme" from Rawville:
Nice breaks in that track! And that is my kind of album cover; the design looks a bit like the first stained glass project my son and I completed, which looks something like this:
Bamboos guitarist Lance Ferguson is also a member of the new funky trio Cookin' on 3 Burners, whose album Baked, Broiled, and Fried is out on the fabulous Freestyle Records label. Now I am left with a dilemma about where to go next: more deep funk around the world, another band with a self-titled theme song, or another song that sounds like this one. (Or is that a trilemma?) I will probably resolve it using the time-honored "whichever one I find first" method. Not that it matters, 'cause it's all good.
After yesterday's entry on Teapacks, today is as good a time as any to feature another Israeli band, The Apples. The "deep funk" sound has caught on worldwide; the Apples put their own stamp on it by adding a couple of DJs to their lineup. This approach can be very effective when a record is scratched and played like an actual musical instrument; it's less effective when it's just used to play the same vocal sample over and over again (file under "why I don't like St. Etienne Germain" (oops, got my Saints mixed up there)). The Apples stay on the good side of that line more often than not. The title track from their 2005 album, Attention!, has some especially funky sax, trumpet, and trombone interplay:
Samples of all their songs and several full-song downloads are available on the Audio page of The Apples' website; and they have two versions of their cover of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing" on their MySpace page. Hmm, that's the second Rage reference in two days; coincidence? I don't know.
Still cruisin'--here's one that I would like to be my cruising-the-nightlife song, but it has become my de facto crawling-through-traffic song. Which is perfect, because it's so upbeat it gives me the illusion of moving even when I'm not. The Sound Stylistics are a supergroup of UK funksters (though to tell the truth, the only name listed in this review that I recognize is that of Hammond organ guru James Taylor) who recorded an album called The Sound Stylistics Play Deep Funk for a film music library in 2002. But by popular demand the album was released to mere consumers this year on Freestyle Records (and iTunes). The high point of the album is track three, "The Players Theme," which demonstrates what happens when funk players turn it up to eleven, and features a generously long drum break (a category I think I'll explore in future posts). (What is it about the third track, is that the "power position" on an album? This is the fourth track three in a row that I've posted!) At just under five minutes long, it's just right for driving to the grocery store (and then starting over for the drive back):
The Sound Stylistics apparently like playing together enough to reunite for occasional live gigs; YouTube has a live version of "The Players Theme" from a June 13 performance at the Jazz Cafe:
One of the more interesting genre revivals to spring up in England over the last decade or so is "deep funk," which seeks to recreate the sound of American local and regional funk bands of the 70s. At the forefront of the style is Speedometer, driven by the close-miked hot snare drum of Professor Chris Starmer. A three-piece horn section, guitar, bass, organ, extra percussionist, and occasional vocals by the Speedettes fill out their sound for good-time danceability. While many deep funk bands concentrate on loping, laid-back grooves a la the Meters, Speedometer often revs up the tempo, as their name implies. I like it fast! Here's "Wait Up," from their 2003 album This Is Speedometer (Vol. 1):
I detect a little "Jungle Boogie" in there. Speedometer also show off their moves on YouTube, performing "No Man Worries:"
And "You Know You Can:"
