Word: funke
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...tracks and distorted space-age bleeps. Splashed through with enough classic soul samples to put Stax Records back in business, Odelay was a manifesto for eclectic electronica, busting out all over the place with the joy of being retrospective and fresh and whimsical. Odd pieces were all there--funk, jazz, roots rock, old-school rap, nonsense lyrics--but suddenly they sounded compatible, credible and organic. The self-proclaimed loser was suddenly "the enchanting wizard of rhythm," devouring and reinventing 50 years of American pop music in one democratic bite. If Beck had lassoed the presumed spirit of Generation-X cool...
...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...
...rather, the widely disparate influences evident on the album are exactly what Soul Coughing needed to gracefully mature from experimenters to true innovators. Soul Coughing finally take full advantage of overdubbing techniques they hesitantly used on their two previous albums to push their music into a realm where electronica, funk, distorted double-voiced lyrics, whistles, duck quacks, heavy bass, strings, weird speakers, guitars and classical piano merge into a miraculous synthesis of noise, beats and poetry. One of the best songs on the album, "Misinformed," opens with funky low toms accented by pounded anvils and noises straight...
Chen says she is trying move the Cafe beyond jazz this year to include more musical genres. This semester will see more folk/pop and a funk. Chen does not hold auditions, insisting that the jazz jam sessions remain open...