Sounding Out the City

10 years ago, Truth & Soul released it’s first full length record, Sounding Out The City. It was also Leon Michels’ first full length record under the moniker El Michels Affair. At the time, the budding retro soul scene consisted of mostly organ quartets a la The Meters and of course, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings were in the early days of their ascent to world domination. Leon Michels, who was 18 when recording Sounding Out The City began, had just released Thunder Chicken, the first record by his high school band The Mighty Imperials. At the time of SOTC, Michels was just discovering early rocksteady, afrobeat, and 60’s garage rock, which inevitably crept its way into the songwriting. He purchased a Tascam 388, an 80’s 1/4″ reel to reel 8 track intended for home recordings, and began recording music in a 10×10 box with no windows that also doubled as his childhood bedroom. Along with fellow Mighty Imperials Nick Movshon, Homer Steinweiss, and Sean Solomon, and Michael Leonhart, Thomas Brenneck, and some of the musicians from The Dap Kings, Michels recorded the LP over a two year period. Upon it’s release, it received some rave reviews and the small deep funk community ate it up, but due to the lack luster promotion and distribution the rest of the world was slow to catch on to the instrumental gems featured on SOTC, which Michels appropriately labeled as “cinematic soul”. However, in 2005 it found it’s way into the hands of the people who were organizing a series of concerts for Scion that paired bands with MC’s. El Michels Affair was contacted about playing one show with Raekwon The Chef of Wu Tang Clan fame. The show was such a success it led to a tour, and then to another set of concerts that featured multiple members of the Wu-Tang Clan. This eventually led to the release of El Michels Affair’s second record, “Enter the 37th Chamber” which introduced them to a much larger audience and has been their most successful release to date. This deluxe reissue features the original Sounding Out The City album remastered as well as some alternate remixes and previously unreleased songs that were recorded during the same period as SOTC on the second disc Loose Change. Michels has since gone on to produce and co-produce many of the Truth & Soul releases including the new Lee Fields record, Emma Jean. He shares songwriting credits with Adele, Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Aloe Blacc, and has played on records by Ray LaMontagne, Lana Del Rey, The Black Keys and Dr. John. Loose Change is a glimpse into the early, early days of El Michels Affair. by Stewart Mason As the work of DJ Spooky and other turntablists indicates, there's a seemingly limitless supply of rare and obscure deep funk grooves out there. However, attempts to replicate the sound have mostly been botched by inappropriate use of "updated" instruments and technology, creating a mutant half-breed that never quite works. Not so with the debut album by Brooklyn's el Michels Affair. Led by organist/drummer Leon Michels , this instrumental group has created a near-perfect simulacrum of late-'60s/early-'70s deep funk, jazz-funk, and soul-jazz, right down to the dub-like lo-fi quality of the sound, as if it were recorded quickly in a cheap studio. If that were all Sounding out the City was, however, it would be an impressive technical achievement but not a particularly interesting album. As it happens, however, Michels and crew have created an album that has as much melodic content (check out the simply gorgeous ballad "Behind the Blue Curtains") and soul as any of the albums it's an homage to. Leading off with the group's prized 2002 debut single "Detroit Twice," Sounding out the City is a canny blend of hard funk and gentler tunes like the Latin-influenced "This Song's for You." All 11 songs (ending with an excellent cover of Isaac Hayes ' "Hung Up on My Baby") are between two and four minutes long, which avoids the unfortunate tendency some similar bands have to run a good groove into the ground through static repetition. That's what the repeat button is for, folks, and it should get quite a workout on this hugely enjoyable album.