Word: funke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...scene. When their first album, Ruby Vroom, spread its funkified wings in 1994, thousands of hungry, pulsing teenagers gasped. Here, at last, was a thing of beauty. Here, at last, was something that made you go "Oh God, yeah, Oh God, I wanna, God, I wanna DANCE." Body-throbbing funk with a deep, heavy low-end, witty lyrics that read like poetry and presuppose (gasp) intelligent listeners, and the seductively quirky voice of lead singer Michael Doughty all melded together on Ruby Vroom to create nothing short of a miracle. Their second album, Irresistible Bliss, released in 1996, lost some...
...enormous energy and excitement of Ruby Vroom. Every lovable aspect of Soul Coughing is present on El Oso in beautifully magnified forms. The beat, for one, is absolutely unforgettable. Soul Coughing has always carefully crafted their music around a strong, supremely danceable groove influenced heavily by hip-hop and funk. Their trademark beat is something they descriptively term a "gangadank", or as Doughty describes it in the album's press release "a kind of guitar rhythm I invented in an attempt to recreate a hip-hop groove on an acoustic guitar--it goes gankadank, gank-duh-did-dank...
Beyond this fun acoustic funk (of which El Oso has lots), Soul Coughing branches out with the beat on El Oso into realms they've never been before. From the opening of the album, it is clear that the beats will be the most prominent and experimental aspect of the album. The first song, "Rolling," opens with drummer Yuval Gabay pounding a quick, charged drum and bass beat, followed immediately by stand-up bassist Sebastian Steinberg's entrance with low bowed bass notes as keyboardist/sampler-man Mark Di Gli Antoni inserts an eerie, ambient synth line. Electronica is slowly creeping into...
...months have seen a number of albums push the boundaries of the music, making thoughtful attempts at mixing jazz with contemporary pop or, even more promisingly, world music. And so on one hand you have woodwind player Don Byron cutting Nu Blaxploitation (Blue Note), an album of overtly political funk and rap; it's not an entirely felicitous concept, but what a treat to hear Byron's clarinet--the fuddy-duddy instrument of Woody Allen!--snaking in and out of dark, fertile electric grooves. On the other hand you have saxophonist David Murray recording his latest album, Creole (Justin Time...
...electric tunes (though listeners who actually lived through the 1970s may not be eager to reacquaint themselves with the sound of Moog synthesizers) but reaches its peak with an acoustic, rhythmically virtuosic version of the Sly Stone title song that somehow manages to swing while also suggesting the original funk beat. McBride says he's trying to provoke: "How many more concept albums can you handle? Such and Such plays the music of Gershwin--a lot of that is getting so tired." He points out that when it comes to pop, his generation grew up listening not to Frank Sinatra...