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artist.....: Karl Hector And The Malcouns
album......: Unstraight Ahead
year.......: 2014
label......: Now Again Records
NA5114CD
source.....: Audience
moodswing..: Funk
releasesize: 91.03 MB
tracks.....: 20
length.....: 56:27
encoder....: VBR LAME 3.98.4 -v0
quality....: avg. 223kbps
scenealized: 08.25.2014
It's been some years since the first
Karl Hector release, and it's known now
that Mr. Hector is indeed the German
producer and guitarist JJ Whitefield,
ne Jan Weissenfeldt. Whitefield is the
visionary behind the Poets of Rhythm
and the Whitefield Brothers, the
ensembles whose rough analog sound and
return to the funk archetypes of the
late 60s to early 70s paved the way for
labels like Daptone, Truth & Soul,
Timmion.
Whitefield, along with Thomas Myland
and Zdenko Curlija, founded Karl Hector
and The Malcouns in the early 2000s.
Their debut, Sahara Swing, saw release
on Now-Again in 2008. The album swung
with influences from across the African
diaspora and set the stage for a cult,
but influential following. Hermes
designer Christophe Lemaire picked
tracks from Karl Hector and The
Malcouns as amongst his favorites in
the Now-Again catalog, and included
them on his Where Are You From
anthology. Festival promoters intrigued
by the possibility of resurrecting the
careers of once forgotten African
mavericks û from Ghana's Ebo Taylor to
the progenitors of Zambia's Zamrock
scene brought Hector and crew across
Europe playing festivals for ecstatic
fans.
A grueling tour schedule made recording
a follow up album to Sahara Swing quite
the challenge, and as a result, the
band opted to release limited edition,
hand-silkscreened EP's, which continued
to show their deft handling of musics
from Eastern and Northern Africa
alongside Western psychedelia, jazz and
funk. Whitefield gave himself 2013 to
finish the album that would become
Unstraight Ahead, which will see
release on Now-Again this summer.
Unstraight Ahead finds the band
exploring territories even outside of
the expansive scope of Sahara Swing. On
this album, the West African sounds of
Ghana and Mali meet the East African
sounds of Mulatu Astatke's Ethiopian
jazz and are tied together with the
groove heavy experimentalism of The
Malcouns 70s Krautrock godfathers: Can,
of course, but also more obscure and
equally adventurous groups like
Agitation Free, Ibliss and Tomorrow's
Gift.
We look to Middle Eastern funk and
psychedelic fusions, and to various
ethnic records for sound and phrasing,
Whitefield states. We're trying to
combine the global experimentalism of
Krautrock with the backbeat of funk.
This explains how songs in uneven
meters 5/4, 7/8 always sound so
accessible and natural on Unstraight
Ahead. It's mainly an instrumental
affair, but guest artists appear
throughout, from across the African
diaspora to those from the worldly
Krautrock forebears of their German
fatherland: it's Marja, daughter of
Embryo founder Christian Burchard,
whose vocals open the album.
It's an album out of time, one that
couldn't have been made in the era its
aural aesthetics reference, as its
scope is so broad. But it's an album
focused by funk û and an ambition to
expand funk's reaches. The Malcouns û
including Poets of Rhythm songwriter
and vocalist Bo Baral created their own
instruments to fashion an album that
stands alongside the great albums of
its progenitors but charges Unstraight
Ahead into a curious musical future.
psst, more info at nowagainrecords.Com
01 Introduction 01:01
02 Push Na Ya 02:32
03 El Gusto 02:50
04 Transition S 01:29
05 Karadeniz 03:01
06 The Spirit of Gine 03:39
07 Transition T 01:35
08 Girmas Lament 02:54
09 Sharpville Massacre 02:21
10 Samai Thaqil 06:35
11 Nibunga 03:01
12 Ombele (Makossa) 04:44
13 Mhammad (Slow) 02:32
14 Transition A 01:19
15 Whos Fooling Who 02:43
16 Transition C 00:36
17 Hymnin 5 01:37
18 Bring It On Down 02:44
19 Mission Control 03:06
20 Kaifa (Part 1 And 2) 06:08