James Brown - In The Jungle Groove

YOURZ

From sample kings The Avalanches to a sampler's choice artist, James Brown.  But what to say about him?

He's the undisputed Godfather of Soul and quite possibly the funkiest of the funkiest. He lived for music, for entertaining and never slowed down, earning himself the title of 'the hardest working man in show business' and, despite numerous health problems, continued a heavy touring regime right up until his death on Christmas Day, 2006.

In The Jungle Groove features two versions of the heavily sampled Funky Drummer. Used by everyone from Public Enemy to Sinead O'Connor, it's perhaps telling that in certain circles, a sample from it is now considered a cliché.  But there's no doubting the track, and the rest of the album, are classics of the genre and quite literally one of the best party starters around.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

MINE

F to the U to the N-K-Y this album just shows how great a musician he was, and how he surrounded himself with the best of the best.  I got to see the late Mr Brown sometime I think in the late 80s.  (Viv, Bill, do you remember when it was?)  And I must admit I was less than impressed by him.  By him, that is, not by his band which produced the tightest, funkiest, sharpest, most amazing sound I had heard to date - and probably the best I've ever heard.

The problem with James Brown was that his band played several songs before he came on, and in between each one, some poor bugger in his band had the job of exciting the audience about the proximity of his arrival.  The audience was definitely left with the feeling that if we didn't scream loud enough, applaud hard enough, he just wouldn't bother gracing us with his presence.

When he made it onstage he was magnificent.  But as I recall, he didn't stay that long.  Maybe I'm maligning him, maybe he was feeling under the weather that day but made it onstage anyway, in the best show-must-go-on tradition.  Whatever it was, it was a bit of a sour note for one of the best in the business.  Can I get a witness?

VERDICT: TURN IT UP get on down

For more information: http://www.jamesbrown.com/

Asian Dub Foundation - Enemy Of The Enemy

MINE

Oooh, now I know what YourZ means when he bangs on about Forgotten Gems.  This cross-genre dancey, bangy, bhangra-reggae mix just got me itchin' to find a dance floor.  There's something so inspirational for the hips about the cut-through sound of a tabla combined with some really dubby bass.  I'm more familiar with their 2000 release, Community Music as I'd once had a copy of it (whatever happened to that?) but this is just as good.  Swinging between different paces, it's another one I want to select tracks from for my Shuffle's range of "gym-spirational" music.

Speaking of which, that's another area where YourZ and my good self couldn't be further apart.  When it comes to pumping iron, he's all about the shouty-boy music - Clutch, Karnivool, Queens of the Stone Age etc.  Whereas I like me some power-pop, big beat and dancefloor fillers - much like these dudes.

In case you're interested, the song 1000 Mirrors features Sinead O'Connor.  But that's one of the slower ones and I'm just looking around for a dance floor.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP (dance, dance, dance)

YOURZ

Mine and YourZ (truly) had a discussion last night about categories in music.  This stemmed from my idea that, as an exercise, it would be interesting to categorise each band we review and put together some sort of statistical analysis at the end of the year.  Mine disagreed for a number of reasons but primarily because she shares my dislike of categorisations.  I countered that I didn't like them either but that the music industry thrives on them as do a lot of the fans.

For the sake of the argument, we went through the selections we'd made so far and applied an arbitrary genre category to each.  The problem with this is the word 'arbitrary' because where I might see a particular act as one genre, Mine sees it as another.  Asian Dub Foundation was one such act.

To me, this is mainly a hip hop album.  It has more melody and rhythmic complexities than rap and while is uses electronica elements, could hardly be considered so because of its live instrumentation.  Yet we argued about it.  In reality, it has all the above elements without being any one of them in particular.  Heck, it could even be said to encompass world music elements as well.  The argument's still not resolved and probably won't ever be.

Why am I telling you this?  Mainly to give you an understanding of what Enemy Of The Enemy sounds like, without applying a particular genre category to it.  It's undoubtedly great music, full of clever beats consistently crossing cultural boundaries.  It's what I call intelligent dance music.  And this isn't a category, this is a reality.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

For more information go to: http://www.asiandubfoundation.com/