New from Ollie Love a.k.a. Asian Hawk a.k.a O.Love of O.Love & The Affair is BRG a.k.a Bounce Rock Groove which channels pretty much everything 1982 it can get its hands on. Electro funk synths? Check. Squalling and rock guitar? Check. Throbbing 80s baseline? Check. Syncopated beat? Check. 80s-style female vocals? Check. Vocoder vocals. Very check. The PR says that BRG ‘bridges’ (see what they did there?) the gap between funk between disco, boogie and city pop and I’m agreeing even though I don’t know what ‘city pop’ is. Ok – now I do because I’ve just googled it. It’s a style of Japanese pop music that was popular in – you guessed it – the 80s. It’s even got a start and end riff that sounds a tiny bit like what the intro to Dennis Coffey’s Scorpio would sound like if it were done by Jan Hammer in a collab. with Soulsonic Force. So there.
