Dinner Music 136: The weekly lineup
jazz funk, boogie, disco groove
This week we’re listening to funk, jazz, boogie, and disco. We’re upbeat. We’re dancing. (I danced nearly every second I spent putting this together). It’s all for the groove. What else?
We begin with Supermax, a project from Austrian musician Kurt Hauenstein. In the 80s, Supermax was the first band to tour as a mixed-race band in South Africa, despite receiving death threats (they finished the tour, all 21 shows). After, other countries marked the band with “no entry” status. World of Today rockets us (mere listeners) into “galaxies of ephemeral disco heaven,” with barn-burner hit after hit. Don’t miss this one. Next, we have Roy Porter Sound Machine’s Inner Feelings, a jazz-funk record from a jazz legend who played with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the 40s and 50s. Porter returned to the music scene in the 70s with this absolute groove machine of an album. Track after track, the beats hit and the bass lines warble like mad. And those keys? I had an uncle who used to email albums to us with the subject “funk alert.” This, my friends, is a bonafide funk alert. We move into Funky Disco Music from Cameroonian musician and Kribi tribal chief Eko. Early in his career, Eko moved to Paris to study and cut his teeth working on and touring jazz-funk and disco. With this record, his third, we get afro rhythms and groovy bass, touches of French power pop and good-feeling groove. Next, we have the mysterious Saâda Bonaire, a German group that released one single, “You Could Be More Than You Are,” in the 80s (EMI released it, immediately dropped and ghosted them, as the story goes). A decade ago, Captured Tracks re-released the single alongside eleven unreleased tracks, as much post-punk they are downtempo reggae. Many were recorded in Kraftwerk’s Cologne studio. These sultry club tracks are shot through with eighties haze and global influence. We end with Splendor’s classic and underrated disco album, laced with soul.
Enjoy.
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