MUSIC: The Budos Band - s/t (LP)

Artist: The Budos Band
Album: s/t
Label: Daptone Records
Released: 2005

Review: I hate to admit it, but this purchase was made shortly after I paid a very large gas bill. After dropping all of that cash for what amounted to half a month's worth of warm comfort, I needed to get something nice for myself. I hate this kind of emotional spending, but in these cold winter months, I sometimes cave. I choose to look at this album as something I paid several hundred dollars for. And you know what? It was entirely worth it.

From the first track, The Budos Band's self titled album kicks into a heavy beat and bass funk with smatterings of brass here and there to make all of the people on the dance floor throw their hands up and say "yeah!" Though an eleven piece band, these guys don't let anyone get drowned out. There are few outright solos, but the Budos Band have an innate sense of timing and a true collaborative spirit. Unlike some of the longer recordings of one of their influences, Fela Kuti, everyone in the band seems to know just when to improvise and when to stand back and enhance the groove by just keeping beat. Energized interplay between electric guitars, woodwinds, brass and dance-enabling conga drums, each song on this album would fare well as a single and is sure to make your dull old music collection ten times the entity it is. Even if you don't dance, this album will make your hips sore with all of the gyrating you'll be doing.

From the looks and sound of this album, you would think that it was a repressing of a funk release from the seventies. In fact, the Budos Band is the newest release from the fantastic Daptone Records label. Daptone dedicates itself to finding the best in today's soul and funk. Some of you might be familiar with the label's house band, The Dap-Kings who have gained some popularity backing the singer Sharon Jones, also released by Daptone Records. The Budos Band formed while some of the members were participating in an after school jazz ensemble in Staten Island, New York. Fans of soul/funk/afrobeat sensations such as James Brown and Fela, they kept meeting up and tried to bring the sounds of funk and soul that they grew up with into the modern day's musical lexicon. They have achieved their goal with this album. Simultaneously raw and tightly orchestrated, the sound of The Budos Band brings nostalgia to the world of funk while staying refreshing and original.

This album was a blind buy. I wandered around Chicago's Dusty Groove record shop aimlessly, not knowing what I wanted to listen to. All I knew was that I had to limit myself to one piece of wax. It had to be something funky and it had to be instrumental. I just wasn't in the mood to hear someone else singing about his sorrows or lost loves. This album happened to be on display, the sleeve said that it was instrumental afro-beat influenced music and it had a picture of an erupting volcano on the front! Employees of Dusty Groove always do a good job picking the newest music to put on display, so I sauntered up to the counter and spent hundreds of dollars (in my mind) for a record I had never heard or seen before in my life. If you don't wish to spend that much, you can skip paying your utility bills and just go to your local record shop to get one for a little more than a ten-spot and still have money left over to get lunch. It'll be worth every penny... well, maybe not the lunch... that depends where you decide to go.

Rating: 4.75 / 5

Image from daptonerecords.com