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THE EMINENT STARS: Sittin In’ (2014)

Sittin In The Eminent StarsBavarian label Tramp Records should be well known to regular MB readers as super-crate-digging, keepers of the vintage rare soul and funk flame but occasionally they like to stick out something new. As long as it sounds like something old. Enter Dutch outfit The Eminent Stars with whom you are invited to be Sittin’ In for their thirteen track debut.

Now I don’t know exactly which town in the Netherlands the band hails from but I wouldn’t mind betting that in the band members’ heads they like to think of it as ‘Nieuw Orlijns’. That’s certainly the message I’m getting from tracks like the Meters pastiche of funky chicken-scratch opener Ben’s Dungeon and fast/ slow funk instro My Baby Is Hot, not to mention the gris-gris-infused Voodoo Do Mar which owes a little something to the work of a certain Mac Rebennack. On these tracks (more so the first two) and elsewhere however, things are tempered by some very Chicago-bluesy guitar though, since this lot also worship at the altar of Freddie King – for which check out the smouldering harmonica n guitar of Slow Cooking Baby in particular. It goes without saying of course that any contemporary funk and soul band has to record their LP using vintage equipment and this lot are no exception. Also helping the band out during the recording session though was a veritable constellation of guest vocalists: Bruce James, Aricia Mess, Lana Gordon, Imelda and Steffen Morrison – whose turn on the northern soulful stomp The Club betrays yet another of the band’s musical influences. The Eminent Stars then – you might be sitting in with them but you’re unlikely to be sitting down with them…
(Out 17 February on Tramp Records)

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