Customer Reviews

Declassified Grooves

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

 

 

Man, I've been waiting a century for this to come back in print ! ! ! We're talking sizzling '70s funk here right along the lines of Mandril, War, early Funkadelic, Ripple and Rasputin Stash... cuts with the rare energy of soul classics like Edwin Starr's WAR and James Brown's Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved - - now you know stuff like that is hard to beat ! An Atlantic label funk group from the early '70s, The sound is fat, lot's of bottom, sizzling Hammond, crackling congas, angry horns, driving Hammond... Pure energy... tight production, I've had beat up copies of three of their albums for almost 15 years, and trust me... they've never warn out... (Apparently rappers haven't gotten tired of 'em either... though I'm surprized probably their most heavily sampled tune "Zimba Ku" didn't make it !) - - If you haven't heard Black Heat... something is missing in your life... definitely, grab this while its still available and play it LOUD ! ! !

Hadn't heard about Black Heat but decided to pick up a bargain copy of this album. I was pleasantly surprised. Solid musicianship that sounds like an extension of War and Mandrill in being very percussion driven. I dig the organ in the mix. Vocally, they seem to have a passable band vocalist rather than a knock an audience dead front man, and that may be one reason they didn't get the sales that would have led to longevity.

If you're wise enough to cover "Love the Life I Live", one of my favorite Kool and the Gang tunes, and can do it with the Funk, you can get a positive review out of me. I dug "Jungle" as well. Get your War compilations, and your Kool and the Gang stuff funk for jazzy instrumental based funk. Nevertheless, this is a solid set of deep funk worthy of investigation for those building a comprehensive funk collection with some choices outside of the beaten path.

I certainly do not have a tremendously extensive background in music, however I think this c.d. should be rated with 6 stars. The cd is well mixed, and by that I mean, the balance between the songs which are instrumental and those who have vocalists are well balanced. Which is something most bands never grasped the importance of. If you have ever listened to a cd with 20 songs by the same artist or the same group of 4 or 5 people you can understand that. I would put this cd in a class of jazz fusion, and the only other group which mixes instrumentals with vocalists and is as well, ingenius and innovative is the band Galactic. My friends who have listened to this cd have given me the same reaction, which is basically "wow, this is great. Most generally I prefer club compilations simply because they have a better balance of artists and instrumentation than other venues. I also believe club music will set trends for all other music venues: jazz, funk, pop etc.

I was surprised to see this Two cd set in my music store the other day. A friend of mine turned me on to this band a few years back, and I was lucky that I found a very clean copy of the record. My only complant about this new cd is the sound, it is very loud in volume. The bass is way up to loud. I have another cd from this same record company also has the same problem. I'm not sure if this is re-mastered or they just turned up the volume to much. Other then that, the music has all the funk and jams that you been missing., but hold on to your vinyl.