Artist: Dâm-Funk
Album: Invite the Light
Label: Stones Throw
Release date: 04/09/15
Toeachizown, a two-part album from American neo-boogie musician and funktronica commander, Dâm-Funk, was his shelf propped music offering of 2009. Six years on, the singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer is back with another offering down the routes of, as he labels it, modern funk.
'Invite the Light' lifts-off with Junie's Transmission which bleeds through as if from a catastropy-struck distant land, plunged into the rotting core of an apocalypse. It warns of a dismal world with the cause of the current state of upheaval being the loss of "funk." Junie Morrison fights through the static to give hope that if the funk is replaced, there will be new beginnings and an evolutionary leap in consciousness. But do not take Junie's Transmission to be one of dire misery that lures you into the deeper depressions of dystopia. It's anything but - as the title of the album should suggest. Straight into We Continue, and you're plunged into a funk bomb knuckles first, so you can really grab at his silky smooth hooks and succession of glittering synths. "Don't you ever stop, we continue" is the lyrical content that does nothing but breed day bending positivity. The third track Somewhere, Someday continues on the orbits of optimism.
Recorded mostly by himself at home, with a troop of his favourite musicians including Junie Morrison, Q-Tip, Snoop Dogg and Leon Sylvers, he has shown his breadth lyrically and vocally, with boast-worthy spells of all-out crooning. While Dâm might be put into the modern funk drawer with the likes of Thundercat and Flying Lotus, he has always injected his funktronica with a layer of the celestial which remains present in 'Invite the Light'. He once stated that he was so timeless, he'd lost his handle on his age and while age is unimportant to him, sticking to one soundbox is as equally unappealing. It bursts with infusions of chill-out style relax recliners in It Didn't Have 2 End This Way, deep house motion-coasters in the drum machine heavy O.B.E, and the obscure with the sinisterly titled The Hunt & Murder of Lucifer which comes to a shotgun close. He manages to mould his wilder more experimental tendencies together with poppier layered licks to produce a compact, post worthy package of funk tunage.
As Junie's Transmission informs, you must "invite the light in order to survive." We might not be Mad Max deep in dystopia but this really needs adding to your ear juicer.
WORDS | Aimee Lawrence
Tracklist
01. Junie's Transmission [Feat. Junie Morrison]
02. We Continue
03. Somewhere, Someday
04. I'm Just Tryna' Survive (In The Big City) [Feat. Q-Tip]
05. Survelliance Escape
06. Floating On Air
07. HowUGonFu*kAroundAndChooseABusta'?
08. The Hunt & Murder of Lucifer
09. It Didn't Have To End This Way
10. Missing U
11. Acting [Feat. Ariel Pink]
12. O.B.E.
13. Glyde yte [Feat. Leon Sylvers III & IV]
14. Just Ease Your Mind From All Negativity [Feat. Snoop Dogg]
15. Virtuous Progression [Feat. JimiJames, Kid Sister, Nite Jewel, Novena Carmel & Jody Watley]
16. Scatin' (Toward The Light)
17. Junie's Re-Transmission [Feat. Junie Morrison]
18. I'm Just Tryna' Survive (In The Big City) Party Version [Feat. Q-Tip]
19. 'Kaint Let 'Em Change Me
20. The Acceptance
