Los Angeles label Now-Again Records releases the newest album by Jay Whitefield (Poets of Rhythm, Whitefield Brothers) and company ‘Unstraight Ahead’ by Karl Hector and the Malcouns. Listen and download the track ‘Push Na Ya’ for free here. Album now on sale at Rappcats or iTunes.
Afrodelic Kraut Funk excursions featuring Members of Poets of Rhythm and Whitefield Brothers. Unstraight Ahead finds Karl Hector and his cohorts exploring territories outside of the already-expansive scope of their debut album Sahara Swing. On this album, the West African sounds of Ghana and Mali meet the East African sounds of Mulatu Astatke’s Ethiopian jazz and are tied together with the groove heavy experimentalism of The Malcouns’ 70s Krautrock godfathers: Can, of course, but also more obscure and equally adventurous groups like Agitation Free, Ibliss and Tomorrow’s Gift. It’s an album out of time, one that couldn’t have been made in the era its aural aesthetics reference, as its scope is so broad. But it’s an album focused by funk – and an ambition to expand funk’s reaches. The Malcouns – including Poets of Rhythm songwriter and vocalist Bo Baral – created their own instruments to fashion an album that stands alongside the great albums of its progenitors but charges Unstraight Ahead into a curious musical future.