So these guys have been out for a little while, their first and only album debuted last October on Dunahm records (a subsidiary of Daptone) and was a collaberative effort between musicians from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, The Antibalas, and Budos Band. Since its release it has been sample by the likes of Wale (look at my Fela Kuti post), Jay-Z, and I'm sure others but Jay-Z is enough to know you are ballin'. Menahan Street Band and their related acts specialize in a kind of nuevo-soul sound that essentially sounds like a frankenstein combination of a speakeasy cliche, a Graham Greene mystery, urban despair, and the unarticulated wailings of a thousand crying soul musicians... if that makes any sense, it shouldn't really. I think a more concise less vague, and perhaps more relatable way of putting it is the sound of a "The Funky Urban Distopia" (The Budos Band also falls under this distinction). This sound is a combination of a style that has both a patina of the familiar while incorporating fresh melodies that borrow from a variety of sources. Its main sonic contributors latin jazz, afro-beat, hip-hop, dub all have found themselves in dark smokey basement clubs and their sound tries to capture that. I think it is music like this that highlights the importance of hip-hop in that it is the essential element that bridges the gap between all these vaguely related forms and pulls them together into something that can be adopted into mainstream listening habits. Hip-hop in effects provides the enabling ingredient that begs us to accept this musics repetitive, perhaps by that same token almost abrasive nature and just listen to the music. To dwell in the space that it creates, outside of our daily experience, but not too far. As French spectralist composer Tristan Murail says "Music is the architecture of time", and music like this that is so specific to a style yet decidedly vague in what it actually presents is a good example of this. That is to say that the music has a strong affect but in the absence of lyrics or even a strong improvisational presence, the music makes up for the lack of the human element in its strong atmospheric presence. This presence I imagine to be the expansive hallowed proverbial walls enclosing that seedy funky underbelly of the urban distopia, what the distopia is like and exatly how funky it may be is up to you.
