ARTIST: Thousands of One
TITLE: Soul Force
LABEL:
GENRE: Hip-Hop
BITRATE: 169kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 1h 06m total
RELEASE DATE: 2008-00-00
RIP DATE: 2008-04-04
Track List
----------
1. Revolution At Hand 4:37
2. SoulForce 5:06
3. Ancient Sounds of Ashanti 0:32
4. Slaveship Mentality (featuring 5:08
SPEECH of Arrested Development)
5. Pharoah (featuring Elliot 5:03
Martin of John Browns Baby)
6. Babylon 5:16
7. Cane Underground 5:28
8. Dig Deeper 4:18
9. King Amplified (featuring 4:38
Mbusi)
10. Race is Over 4:50
11. Future Sounds of Osaka 2:52
12. History 4:56
13. When I Met You 3:36
14. Among The Stars 5:33
15. Revolution Reprise 4:09
Release Notes:
Local favorites Thousands of One have finished their second CD, ôSoulForce,ö
which they'll be releasing Saturday night at Castaways.
The five-piece band ù drummer Joel Blizzard, guitarist Safak Ozkan, singer
Jhakeem Haltom, saxophonist Mark Wienand and bassist Brett Eva ù went for a live
sound on the CD, which showcases a blend of soul, funk, gospel, rock, hiphop and
other cool influences.
ôWe decided to do what we could to get a better sound from the start,ö says
Blizzard. The first album was pretty much pieced together on home computers. So
we did live performances this time ù we went out to Chad Crumm's studio in
Trumansburg and did full-band, live takes.ö
The band road-tested much of the material. ôThat's part of what took us a long
time,ö says Blizzard. ôWe write pretty organically; we write our music as a
collaborative, so when we're searching for a sound we tend to play the song live
several times live and keep working on it as a work in progress. We actually
went into the studio a year and a half ago and recorded a bunch of these songs,
but we decided to after several months later to go back and do it again because
the songs kept changing.ö
Blizzard co-produced the album with John Brown's Body frontman Elliot Martin,
who also helmed the band's debut CD. ôHe actually took more of a producer role
rather than an engineer role,ö says Blizzard. ôOn the first album, he did a lot
of the work on his computer; this album, we kept a lot of the raw performances
intact instead of synthesizing them. That was one of his judgementsùjust let the
songs be.
ôAt one point he advised us quite strongly in a certain direction, which was
more going toward the song format rather than instrumentals. We were thinking of
making this a double disc with lots of instrumentals, but he said, æJhakeem has
a got a great voiceùgo with the songs!' So that really tightened up the
process.ö
The band enlisted the help of plenty of guests on the new album, including
Speech from Arrested Development, who contributed a verse to ôSlaveship
Mentality.ö
ôWe met up with him at GrassRoots and gave him a CD, and he suggested that he'd
put a verse on it, so we obliged him,ö says Blizzard with a laugh. ôMbusi is
featured on one song and sings a chorus on another; Elliot sings on one song;
and Rich Graiko from Westbound Train and Void Union made some pretty significant
contributions on trumpet for several tracks.ö
Other guests include keyboardist Chad Lieberman, who now performs most gigs with
the band, and vocalist Dani Dicaccio; former guitarist Tom Sayers also plays on
several tracks.