Karl Hector & The Malcouns, Unstraight Ahead
BIS => 2025 05 02
2LP - NOW-AGAIN
2014
TRACKLIST
A1 Introduction
A2 Push Na Ya
A3 El Gusto
A4 Transition >S<
A5 Karadeniz
A6 The Spirit Of Gine
B1 Transition >T<
B2 Girma's Lament
B3 Sharpville Massacre
B4 Samai Thaqil
C1 Jo Nibunga
C2 Omebele (Makossa)
C3 M'Hammad
C4 Transition >A<
C5 Who's Foolin' Who?
C6 Transition >C<
D1 Hymnin S
D2 Bring It On Down
D3 Mission Control
D4 Kaifa Part 1+2
DESCRIPTION
Karl Hector aka the German producer and guitarist JJ Whitefield, 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. Festival promoters intrigued by the possibility of resurrecting the careers of once forgotten African mavericks 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 and an ambition to expand funk's reaches. The Malcouns 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.
| Statut: BACK IN STOCK |
| Genre: AFRO / AFROBEAT / AFRO-FUNK, JAZZ |
| Format: 1 LP |
| Date de parution: 2014 |
| Label: NOW-AGAIN RECORDS |