It’s hard to believe, but »Efunk« is actually just the debut of the bustling DJ-Crew Soul Clap from Boston. After many successful works for well-known artists like Laid Back, Joakim, or the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble, Charles Levine and Eli Goldstein together with the New Yorker cronies of Wolf + Lamb came up with a notable »DJ-Kicks«-issue in 2011. The logical consequence is »Efunk«: Everybody’s Freaky Under Nature’s Kingdom. On this record, the collective harks back to what it knows best: combining funk, jazz, house and hip-hop and rephrasing it to their trademark sound, acting from necessity. Because everyone in Boston was calling for some kind of variety in order to stand up to the house-superpowers of Chicago and Detroit. Hence, they made a virtue of necessity and added some West-Coast hip-hop beats and funk-elements to their 80s house. All that can be heard on »Efunk«, even though the record seems to have a particular problem: Soul Clap are just aiming for too much here. Following Wolf + Lamb’s concept, they’re going for a »Pop«-approach (for example, ex-All-Saint-starlet Mel Blatt lends her voice to the R’n’B cover version of »Need Your Lovin’«), which doesn’t do the perfectly produced record much good. Focusing on their known strengths would have probably been the better choice for their LP-debut.
Efunk: The Album
