Sola Rosa - Get It Together (2009)

Summer’s coming in New Zealand, and I have found the perfect summer album. It is five years old, released in 2009, but as a music blogger things often come to my attention late, especially when you consider the vast amount of music there is floating around. But in the case of this seriously funky album by New Zealand collective Sola Rosa, the late coming has definitely been worth it.

Sola Rosa, led by Andrew Spraggon, as a collective has been around the music scene in New Zealand for over ten years exploring and creating a vast array of melodic and groove based sounds. Their music tends to follow a fusion pattern, mixing together more styles than you can count on two hands, including hip hop, jazz, reggae, soul and funk, something that features strongly on this album Get It Together. New Zealand seems to be a melting pot for these types of musical collectives, especially in the past ten years with bands such as Sola Rosa, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Trinity Roots and the Black Seeds pioneering an experimental fusion style of music, but also a no fear approach to composing music where anything is possible and any style can be mixed together. I guess this is also why many of these acts have had great success outside of New Zealand and why their music can often relate to many different types of music fan.

As for the songs on Get it Together, well the album kicks off with the very funky “The Ace Of Space”, a song which has an infectious bass groove, some pretty cool scratch work, as well as splattering’s of strings and horns. This is followed by “Turn Around” which features Iva Lamkum on vocals who does a nice job on this up-tempo R&B track. “Del Ray” is a sort of middle-eastern sounding track, especially in the horn riff which dominates the song, as well as the guitar part which has a slight Spanish flamenco feel to it also. “Humanised” which features Bajka on vocals is a soul-jazz track, with jazz-inspired horns and a raunchy vocal, while “Love Alone” featuring Spikey Tee is a fusion of dub, reggae and hip hop, although the results I find on this track are mixed. Thankfully, things get back on track with the brilliant six minute epic title track “Get It Together”. This instrumental has a Curtis Mayfield vibe to it, especially in the horns and percussion and represents an album highpoint with all the ingredients that make up a good fusion track in the form of jazz, funk, electronic and plenty of groove. I also love how out of nowhere the song transitions into a sort of samba for the last minute, showing that the band can also throw up plenty of surprises when you least expect it. “I’ve Tried Way’s” features Serocee and is a hip hop/electronic track which I thought failed to measure up to some of the other tracks, feeling a bit like a come down, especially after the previous epic. This mini-lul in proceedings unfortunately continues on next track “Lady Love”. However, things get back up and running on “All You Need”, which is another six minute track that has an experimental jazz funk vibe to it, while again showcasing the talent on display here when it comes to composition. I find that on listening to this album the instrumentals really stand out and the band do a great job in experimenting with different rhythms, textures, as well as moulding together different sounds, with this track being a prime example. Finally, the album closes with “Bond is Back”, the hint into what this one sounds like is in the title, and album closer “These Words, These Sounds, These Powers” which is probably the most reggae sounding track on the album.

All in all I found this a great album to listen to, and a perfect album to be played outdoors in the sun with a beer in hand and good food. The instrumentals on here really shine through and showcase just what you can do when you mix different styles of music together across one track. The results are quite simply stunning and in some cases quite mind blowing especially for musical nerds like myself. The rhythms of this album really stand out especially in the bass and percussion, rhythms which do a great job in driving the album along from track to track, just like the great experimental funk and R&B records of the early-70s. In conclusion, I may be five years late to the party but the wait was certainly worth, especially when the results are this good. 

A-

- Sam 

Various Artists - Country Funk 1969-1975 (2012)

What is country funk? Well that is the first question I asked before I had even listened to a single track off this 2012 compilation. As a style label, country funk has been coined years later probably by the people who conceived this compilation, and musically speaking is meant to encompass a range of different styles including gospel, blues, county, and roots rock which many American artists in the late-60s and early-70s were experimenting with and blending together in their music. At this time, artistic experimentation in music was rife, with many artists mixing things up and crossing over into different musical territories, something you can certainly here on this album with elements of country, gospel and funk featuring within a single track. So although country funk is not exactly a precise stylistic term musically, and I would argue has been used more so as a selling point for this compilation, the term does a nice job of describing the types of musical merging’s that were taking place in the States during this period.

Aesthetically I would also say the music termed country funk is linked together by the fact that the songs which fall under this umbrella term as witnessed by the material on this compilation tend to have groove, boogie, and an underlying rawness about them. I would say it is music from the country but with the feel of the city. Spiritually I also think the themes of the songs are coming from a southern perspective, and you can certainly see that in some of the song titles on this album, with things like “Georgia Morning Dew”, “Lucas Was a Redneck” and “Bayou Country”. As for the artists that feature, well they are not big names by any stretch, something that I actually find a good thing and is one of the reasons I find these sorts of stylistically-based compilations quite intriguing, as I come to listen with no real pre-conception of the artists themselves and what sort of music they play. This in itself can often make the listening experience that much more enjoyable. With this in mind, just some of the standouts for me on this compilation included Johnny Adams “Georgia Morning Dew” which is a sort of slide guitar country blues, Bobby Charles “Street People” which has a Band feel to it, the playful kick of Larry Jon Wilson’s “Ohoopee River Bottomland”, the southern soul of Bobbie Gentry’s “He Made a Woman Out of Me”, and finally a storming blues cover of Dr John’s “Walk on Gilded Splinters” by Johnny Jenkins.

This compilation for me represents a melting pot of those Southern styles of music that were often mixed and moulded together into completely new sounds, sounds which came to dominate the music scene of the late 60s and into the 70s. Artists might have been country at heart, but were filling to throw in a funk rhythm or bass line, or they might have been a gospel singer but the country came calling. This sort of musical freedom reigned supreme for a slight moment in time there, and for a fleeting second was the norm in the music industry until the corporates of LA came calling and one had to be pigeon-holed into a box to be sold. It is hard to pin country funk down, let alone describe it, so perhaps in conclusion it is best to simply acknowledge country funk for what it represents, and that is music which is fun, playful, and experimental. So credit to the folks at Light in the Attic Records for releasing this neat little set, and I certainly look forward to hearing volume two “Country Funk 1967-1974” which itself has just been released. 

B+

- Sam 

El Michels Affair - Enter the 37th Chamber (2009)

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 37^th 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 

Queen - Live at the Rainbow 74 (2014)

Queen Live at the Rainbow 74 is a newly released live album of Queen’s two 1974 shows at the famous Rainbow theatre in London, shows which took place during the bands Queen II tour in March which forms the basis of disc one, and the Sheer Heart Attack tour in November which features on disc two. The recordings capture the band at their hard rocking and theatrical best, when they were really just unknown novices and before they had broken through into the mainstream. The concerts were originally supposed to be released as a live album at the time but instead were put on the backburner with the band deciding to focus instead on the recording of their seminal album A Night at the Opera. Now forty years later, the original tapes have been re-mastered and polished up and boy oh boy do they sound good, with a crystal clear sound and fantastic mix which means you can actually here the individual instruments. This is something you don’t always get with live albums where often the sound is a bit muddled and not always the best. I am sure some pitch correction and other such things have gone on to get the sound up to a modern standard, but this is all in the name of getting a great sounding modern day historical release.

As for the material on this album, well the focus is the band’s first three albums Queen, Queen II, and Sheer Heart Attack, albums which if you know anything about early Queen are very heavy and quite progressive, something which may surprise people who only know Queen through their big late-70s and 80s hits. There are big vocals a-plenty as Mercury flexes is range, theatrics and banter with the crowd, something that occurs between each song and is a pleasure to listen to, heavy guitars, and a thunderous rhythm section courtesy of John Deacon and Roger Taylor, a somewhat underrated pairing. Song-wise, the highlights are for me mostly on disc one, the March concert with the band playing some stellar versions of tracks from their first two albums. There is the anthemic “Father To Son”, the early metal of “Ogre Battle”, the Sabbath-esque sounding “Son And Daughter”, along with two great versions of “Seven Seas Of Rhye”, “Liar” and a fantastic rollicking cover of rock and roll classic “Jailhouse Rock”. Disc two for me is the lesser of the two discs, but still captures great versions of the likes of “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Stone Cold Crazy” and “In The Lap of The Gods Revisited”. What is amazing about the material overall is how heavy Queen sounded in their early years, a sound far removed from what they became most-famous for later on. I would go as far in saying as a new band on the scene in 1974 following in the footsteps of the likes of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who and Black Sabbath, they certainly were footing it with the big boys of British heavy rock that had come before.

In conclusion, Live at the Rainbow 74 is a fantastic sounding record and offers up a great insight into early-Queen, a period in their career which has not really received much attention, especially in terms of re-releases. People forget Queen started as a hard rock band and this album does a great job in capturing their early sound. For people not familiar with the early part of the bands career, some of the material might fall a bit flat at times just because of their often theatrical and progressive nature both lyrically and musically, but this does not get in the way of what is a great 70s rock and roll show, featuring a band throwing everything they had in their arsenal out there on the stage. Little did they know that this was just the start of something much, much bigger to come, but as this albums shows, the marker was being laid down in a big way. 

A

- Sam 

T Rex - The Slider (1972)

The Slider was the seventh studio album released by 70s UK glam rockers T Rex. Released in 1972, it was the second of their releases which showcased their new found glam sound, after releasing their first few albums as a folk outfit in the late-60s. The timing was perfect for the band to completely change their image and sound, with Britain in the midst of a glam rock revolution in the early-70s with artists such as David Bowie, Slade, and Roxy Music tearing up the charts. But aside from Bowie, it would was Marc Bolan and his merry men who would blow all others out of the water with their often hard-edged and incredibly catchy pop/rock style.

Sound-wise, well The Slider tends to follow on from the bands previous effort, the very successful Electric Warrior album in what is a mixture of anthemic bubble-gum rock, downer folk, and glam ballads. Vocally there is plenty of high-pitched falsettos, while lyrically the songs move from sort of mystical folk themes to often overtly sexual lyrics. The songs are held down by a very sturdy rhythm section of Steve Currie on bass, Mickey Finn on percussion, and Bill Legend on drums, but it is clear from the outset that Bolan is the star attraction out front and centre with his vocals, guitar playing, and overall theatrical take on pretty much everything. It is also pretty clear throughout the album that Bolan loves a good groove as there are plenty on here, with the guitar and bass providing the impetus on many of the tracks with some great rock and roll riffs.

As for the tracks themselves, well the album kicks off with the Bowie-esque glam anthem “Metal Guru”, the albums single which ended up topping the charts in the UK at the time. Although it’s a nice rousing sing-a-long start to the album, musically speaking it is nothing special and tends to be a wee bit repetitive, but hell, at least it gets you in the mood for what’s to come. “Mystic Lady” is next, a slow folk ballad which again fails to capture my imagination, while “Rock On” ends what is a very slow and un-exciting start to the record. However, thankfully things being to pick up from here starting with the slow riff rocker “The Slider” and the catchy bubble gum rock and roller “Baby Boomerang” with its 50s guitar and falsetto-laden vocals. After another blip on the radar with “Spaceball Ricochet” the band turn things up a notch again with heavy rocker “Buick Mackane”, a stomping guitar track which would notably be covered by Guns n’ Roses years later. Then there is perhaps the album standout “Telegram Sam”, a song that epitomises glam rock with its riffs, falsettos, elicit lyrics and even some cheeky sax thrown in for good measure. “Rabbit Fighter” is another ballad, but this time the band do a better job with a song that also showcases Bolan’s rough and ready guitar playing, proving that he was also a pretty good guitarist in his own right despite being not technically great. Things move along with more riffage on “Baby Strange” with its somewhat playful and explicit lyrics “I want to call you, I want to ball you”, I guess it is glam after all? And the album finally winds down with the best of the folk ballads on the album “Ballrooms of Mars”, “Chariot Choogle” and the double-tracked falsetto album closer “Main Man”.

In conclusion, The Slider is probably T Rex’s most complete album considering they were on the most part a singles band, with there being plenty of standout tracks mixed in with some lesser moments to. It’s the folk ballads where the album tends to fall a bit on the way side, with these tracks not really living up to the more up-tempo rockers in intensity and what I would describe as overall zing. Despite containing mixed results there is still plenty of good material on here to remind that Bolan was a star lyricist, vocalist and overall showman, and as an album certainly The Slider ranks well within the glam rock canon. Definitely worth a listen if anything as an example of early-70s glam rock in the UK, and also in hearing how T Rex could marry the folk of their early career with the glam rock which they became more well known for. 

B 

- Sam