El
Michels Affair started life as a house band for a small record label Soul Fire
Records, before transitioning into a recording 9-piece musical collaboration
led by saxophonist and organist Leon Michels. With this, Michels also started
his own record label the Brooklyn-based Truth & Soul Records, a record
label dedicated to producing and releasing soul and funk material. El Michel’s
Affair play only instrumentals, and their style is a fusion of 60s and 70s soul
and funk, Afrobeat and jazz, with some coining this mix of styles cinematic
soul, something I completely understand as their music does sound very much
like the soundtrack to the movie you have never seen. Their sort of loose, raw
playing style is very much Meters-inspired, and perhaps also the Roots,
something which I guess keeps with their house band origins and suits very much
the sorts of instrumentals they play.
This
brings me to the album itself, which aside from containing some amazingly good sounds,
is also as a concept quite a clever idea and something which definitely caught
my eye. This album Enter the 37th
Chamber is quite a unique album, as it’s a cover album of instrumental
versions of Wu Tang Clan and Raekwon tracks, with the band putting their own jazz-funk
slant on the backing tracks and beats of some of hip hop’s classic tracks. From
my perspective, this is such a cool idea and something I have often contemplated
when listening to hip hop. Leaving aside the amazing lyrics which you can get
with hip hop, the one thing about this style of music which I have always been
sucked into is the quality production, and amazing backing tracks and samples
you can find on hip hop recordings, beats that I have often thought would sound
amazing just on their own. This makes El Michels Affair’s attempt to recreate
such tracks on this album even better, as they are recreating them by playing
them live within the confines of a soul-jazz ensemble; and boy do the band do a
more than adequate job in covering such classic tracks as Wu Tang’s “CREAM” and
“Uzi (Pinky Ring)” and Raekwon’s (who incidentally helped oversee the
production and recording of this album) “Criminology”.
This is
such a dope album both concept-wise and musically speaking. It’s music to chill
out to, to relax to, to entertain with, and enjoy summer with. I am a big fan
of artists who play instrumental music across all styles and these guys with
their own unique interpretation of Wu Tang certainly hooked me. I look forward
in seeing what else they have up their sleeve, and what they might put their
funky, jazzy touch to in the future. DOPE.
A-
- Sam
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