Customer Reviews

In the Buzz Bag

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

BFE entegrated the most beloved Turkish tunes to NY funk. It's a very successful fusion, but in fact, the original Turkish melodies remain so untouched, so that you can play this cd even in a traditional turkish club. The rhytym harmony is amazing. So fun and peacefull. It is not possible to understand how elseman@hotmail.com came to the point of politics in middle east in his review of the album. Incredible successfully selected songs belong purely to folk music, and have of course nothing to do with government issues, as away as BFE is from Bill Clinton's new years programme. BFE has added a great international taste to its experience. BFE has left the roxy club in Istanbul some time ago, but we still like to hear the voice of a child from the jam sessions on a musical marriage. I highly recommend this album to funk, jazz, rap and world beat fans.

I like this album very much. The balances of instrumets is really good. I like its sound and I can feel the groove. I got never bored listening it. The band worked with gypsy musicians in Turkey. Most of the Turkish melodies used are real classics in Turkey. I can say they don't create much about Turkish music but they really mixed it quite good with funk and jazz.

It's a great album, dynamic an itelligent. Group has made a good blend like Marlboro with Turkish tobacco. But still, I think some tracks are a little bit overdriven with Turkish music. It's a tasteful album which get the same pleasure each time I listen.

I was in their concert last summer in Istanbul. They mixed up very well with the Turkish band, everybody in the theatre was standing up and dancing, some people even jumped to the stage and accompanied the vocalist.

Need I have to say more?

the whole cd grows on you ,i never get sick of it i wish this kind of music was on the radio more

BROOKLYN FUNK ESSENTIALS In the Buzz Bag (Shanachie) Among much other stupid but reality-check trivia near my stereo I have a little known and not very good CD single. It's Smoke on the Water by Philly rapper King Kurlee and features Blackmore Jr doing Richie's famous Deep Purple guitar solo. It's smack-whack, dumb-fun and never fails to impress those with as little taste as me when it comes to rockin' the bbq. I tell you this by way of consumer warning that I buy the book, album and CD single by it's cover. So when this new album by BFE included a track called Magick Karpet Ride I'm down there hauling out old Steppenwolf and playing it back-to-back with Grandmaster Flash and looking for yet another weird implosion of indiscriminate pop-vulturism. And it's fine because here BFE announce a world music of the funky, un-PC, non- Womad kind. Atlas-rock in da house. Opening with a distant, wicked TuPac laugh beneath 70's funk-noir keyboards and a vocal line located somewhere between Basra and Brooklyn, this implosion of Istanbul and India, dumb'n'funk Brooklyn and drum'n'bass is perhaps destined never to find its true audience. Whatever that might be. I guess that's what happens when herbalists from NYC take a trip to Turkey and link up with a local band Laco Tayfa. Jeez, it was bound to happen. And I don't know about you, but I've always like the sound of the oud. A product description then? Think a warm night under Turkey's Taurus mountains where Burning Spear appears to dub-up the system,. And where a kid from Ankara scored that Steppenwolf single the day his Mum bought an old album by Mogollar (a late 60s Turkish rock band which blended local folk and electric guitars, the Steeleye Span of Turkistan). Mix in stoned and slurry trombone, funky organ and cowbells, something about "I love the smell of your armpit" and the first First Generation of the Specials meets Funkadelic-inna-fez and I guess you're part of the playpen. Love it myself. This is play it loud'n'play it (pr)oud -- even if you forget what's being sung about and don't care what's the neighbours think. (Not something you can do if you border Syria and Iraq, or the Hamptons and the UN Building perhaps?) Down here, a world away from all that we have to ask: is it any good? Who knows, says the Kurlee Kurt man? All this civilian says is it got to me over a long hot summer, pal, and hasn't failed me yet. (Except the total rubbish FF draggy soul ballad track five.) My guess is there's a whole new genre here (kif funk'n'dub) and it's time to get your passport stamped again. ****

This to me does not have the wallop of Make 'Em Like It, but it may be the better album for its diversity.

Here, Brooklyn Funk Essentials use more open spaces and jazz solos, rather than the jackhammer attack of Make 'Em Like It, the first album I bought by this amazing collective.

The adding here of Turkish sounds gives an extra edge, and these shadings sound natural in the spacious digital funk caverns the band creates. It does not sound exotic, and that is to Brooklyn Funk Essential's credit--they are so good, all music is real to them, and any vibe they assimilate into their music will work.

This blend of funk with that turkish sound is sweet, mellow and relaxing! The lyrics are great, since 1999 I have owned this cd. and do not get tired of listening to it, enjoyable every time.

BFE and Laco Tayfa made a great synthesis of Turkish tunes and NY beats. It is so much fun to listen to the fusion between two cultures.
I bought it after listening to the 2 groups live in Istanbul (which was incredible) and have been listening to it since then (since 2000)...

You just got to listen to it! It's unbelieveble!Fantastic