US

Tales of sordid street escapades, drugs and fast women have been long running themes for Tucson, AZ’s Zackey Force Funk. Though these are themes that have been explored to excess in music over the years, his psychedelic, acid-trip style has been what places him in another realm. Three quarters singing and one quarter rapping, the Force Funk sound has been well-established in the world of underground electronic music over the last decade. With the arrival of his MoFunk debut album, Bodyrock Shotgun, ZFF is set to advance yet another level with melodic modern funk production that challenges him to expand his one-of-a-kind vocal style to new territory.Highlights include the XL Middleton-produced title cut, a slow-rolling, vocoder-laced tune that haunts as much as it thumps. Brian Ellis brings his signature brand of moody electro funk on “Glass Dick Lovin’,” a dark tale of love lost to drug addiction. “Money Weighs A Ton,” imported from the recent Boy Dude LP on Hobo Camp, slides seamlessly into the playlist with pulsating synths framing an unapologetic hustler’s manifesto. “El Mero Mero” (prod. by XL Middleton) stands as another declaration of street corner superiority, while “Get The Gun” serves as a self-explanatory footnote on how to keep said position, over Moog-y production from Adam Chini that is equal parts Blaxploitation and retro science fiction. Further productions from Throwback Zack, Proh Mic, Trailer Limon, DJ Spy-D, and Elegant Borzoi form a veritable who’s who in the land of modern funk, and show Zackey’s superb ear for beat curation.

After opening for Roy Ayers, a packed out Euro tour and features on Moodymann’s illustrious DJ-Kicks, jitwam comes thru with a funky dose of luscious bass and hand-clapping soul – back from the shadows and into the purple

David Axelrod delivered one of the great psychedelic albums with 1968’s Song of Innocence, based around the poetry of William Blake. It is considered by many his masterpiece.Song of Innocence is this weird hybrid that no one, not even Axelrod himself, could ever really describe. The listener is pulled in by his melodies, simplistic at first blush, but colored by odd chord progressions and turn arounds, grounded by the drummer Earl Palmer and Carol Kaye’s funk, torn between the juxtaposition of musical elements – a jazz vibraphone solo here, a fuzz guitar tear here, a nod to the baroque in Don Randi’s clavichord comps – and put at ease, always, by Axe’s arrangements, which utilize brass and strings in a way that no 1960s arranger did.It’s worth noting that there are really count-on-your-hand examples of anything that might even be compared to Song of Innocence. Perhaps Arthur Verocai’s self-titled and only artist album, issued on the Brasilian Continental label in 1972, or the collaborations between Serge Gainsbourg and Jean Claude Vannier, which found their epitome in 1971’s Histoire de Melody Nelson. But even these albums, superb, in any thinking music fan’s canon of the best from this era, perhaps in their lives - and perhaps in line with Song of Innocence - are one-offs. Axelrod’s Song of Innocence set in path a series of artist albums on Capitol and other labels and influenced the world countless times over, from The Verve to DJ Shadow to Madlib to J.Dilla.Remastered from the original tapes in a new transfer, with extensive liner notes and unpublished photos.