Set to Farees’s self-coined ‘wall of groove’ production style, this duet with The Meters’ guitarist is a syncopated kaleidoscope of squelchy funk, Latin vibes and Stevie Wonder-esque political ire. Plus the sort of trippy, idiosyncratic moments that make us think of Parliament/Funkadelic (‘That’s Farees right there! He’s on the drums, he’s singing, playing maracas, building spaceships, all types of shit!’). It’s not hard to see why the likes of Taj Mahal have endorsed him.
Loss affects us all in different ways: Some fold into themselves for a long time, whilst others dive headfirst into anything and everything that can keep them occupied and away from their emotional scars. For Under the Rug’s Casey Dayan, the concurrent loss of his mother and dissolution of his relationship sent him down the road of intimate reflection, self-discovery, and world exploration. READ MORE…
Neo-funk’s Farees has a new LP, Galactic Africa, coming out on 3 June, and he’s teasing it with “Mercury / Orgullosamente”. The Afrobeats artist creates a propulsive track full of rhythmic complexity, almost recalling footwork’s in some of its moments. It attacks cultural imperialism and appropriations: “Everybody wanna dance like Africans / Be tough be cool like Africans / Sing and shout and play like Africans / Smooth like Africans / Tryna look like Africans, talk like Africans, walk like Africans / But you’ll never be real like Africans / Now hit the drum like Africans.”
