What the CL Music Team is listening to on this fine Monday to rocket launch the work week. Click here to check out previous entries.
Leilani – Air, Le Voyage Dans La Lune (out tomorrow, Feb. 7, 2012 via Astralwerks); Adrian Younge, Something About April (2011)
I’ve only listened to the new Air effort a few times, but am already intrigued. The French electro duo composed music to go with Georges Méliès’ 1902 film, A Trip To The Moon (Le Voyage Dans La Lune), the work commissioned in conjunction with the painstaking restoration of the early sci-fi film and more a companion piece than an actual score. You, too, can listen to it now at NPR.
Younge’s album would’ve made my Best of 2011 list, had I heard it sooner and I’ve been jamming the hell out of it for the past few weeks. In Something About April, multi-instrumentalist/composer Younge — who’s been a buzzed-about talent since he scored the 2009 blaxploitation spoof, Black Dynamite — mixes ’70s retro funk and psyche soul in the vein of Sly and the Family Stone, with moments of ’50s R&B-fused pop, sexy blaxsploitation slinkiness and hints of Spaghetti Western drama, all of it wrapped up in a sexy, seriously cool package. Singer-songwriter provides mood-setting vocals amid the instrumental forays, which feature guests Dennis Coffey (Motown’s Funk Brother fuzz guitarist), Shawn Lee (Ubiquity Records), and Italian cinephiles Calibro 35. Check out lead single “It’s Me” below.
“It’s Me” by Adrian Younge Presents Venice Dawn by Wax Poetics
This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2012.
