Soul Center "Soul Center 3" Novamute 3066-2 2002 (58:35)
Funky Sterling (6:50)
A Good One (5:21)
Third Hand (4:51)
Easy
Goin' (5:21)
I Know (4:18)
How Far Do You Wanna Go? (4:05)
What This World Is (4:43)
Time (5:56)
26
Chicky Boom (5:50)
Who's My Girl? (6:08)
Lopster (5:12)
A Good One (CD-ROM video)
Thomas Brinkmann's third Soul Center album is the first for Mute's dance division NovaMute. Soul Center is considered Brinkmann's electronic funk outlet. Here he loops minimal mid-tempo grooves and jazzes them up with percussion layers, (sampled?) keyboard and saxophone runs and nicked spoken and vocal phrases from classic Stax wax such as Isaac Hayes' "Live At The Sahara Tahoe". When I think of "funk" I think of the real deal: James Brown, Parliament / Funkadelic, Troublefunk, etc. I'm talking grit and sweat. You know ... funk. This ain't that. It's often just German techno wearing a goofy afro wig. As funk it's too sterile, as techno it's too cutesy. But as something in-between and something to dance to, this ain't that bad. A couple of tracks pique my interest more than the others. The dubby groove of "Easy Goin'" is great alone but it gets even better when tasty keys reminiscent of Coil's "The Snow" are faded in on top. And "Who's My Girl?" really gets things moving with a truncated vocal and piano riff rolled into a thumpin' beat. Also on the disc is a cute video for "A Good One", the stop-motion adventures of the cover's robo-pooch ...
Thomas
Brinkmann discography
NovaMute
Where did I get this CD? - promo