The always excellent Soul Jazz Records has spent the last couple of years cornering the market in cool reissues. I've spent quite a bit of green on many of their releases, including a couple of great ones I picked up this week - Konk's The Sound Of Konk and the collection of funk, soul and disco from 1965-73, The Sound Of Philadelphia - Philadelphia Roots Vol.2.
Konk were a 7 piece NYC punk-funk combo who combined afro beat and Latin flavors with hip hop and classic American funk. They were part of the seminal early '80s NYC scene, bands like ESG, the Bush Tetras and Liquid Liquid. Another band who they share some similarities with is A Certain Ratio. Unlike many of their peers, their success outside of New York was small, and so as the '80s drew to the end so did Konk. Love Attack shows traces of a lot of the genres I mentioned earlier with the addition of some electro flava. It's a bumpin', horn filled disco track with a great chorus.
The Philly soul compilation is 20 tracks of funk from acts like The Three Degrees, The Delfonics, Nat Turner and a bunch of other bands all affiliated with the famed writer and production team of Gamble and Huff. If you dig the '70s sound of Philly soul from bands like the O'Jays, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes and MFSB, this collection is a great way to experience the music they made in the years prior to that. MFSB's first recording was a version of the Sly Stone tune Family Affair, which they recorded as The Family. This song has always been a fave of mine, and this version is great. It's an instrumental, uptempo take on the song with some killer keys taking the lead role and a fat ass groove - lots of wacka wacka action. Short but very sweet.
1 comment:
ah yes this konk comp is awesome! konk comp? whoa. don't say that fast!
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