a couple of years ago jamie liddel released an album that combined his love of messy laptop electronica and prince styled funk, the very successful live show was all about the mans dress sense and very impressive voice. for those that loved all of that, snax is going to be your hero for 2006. a well connected permed hipster from germany, who has made albums previously as captain comatose, and toured as part of the foetus live band, now gets his party mood back into gear for this second solo set.
opening with one of the weaker tracks on the album, ‘letmetellyouastory’, is rather unfortunate, something about the whole jittery beats and tunes dont sit as well as they should, thus meaning i didn’t feel any urge to get in deeper. big mistake. i repeat, big mistake.
for once you get past this hiccup, the rest of the album is on a roll. clean beats, unusual production touches add layers of detail to the classic era prince styled stripped down electro funk. just listen to that clipped guitar lick in the first standout track, raw deal, pure purple funk, and when they get to the ‘dont go chasing waterfalls’ bridge, the instudio crowd can’t help but clap out in joyous harmony as the use of the phrase is a direct connector to the boss of paisley park beats, added to the mix is a downright dirty little rap by tara delong. superb.
alongside the minimal synth action, are a couple of real live band sounding tracks (the title track for example, with its delicious go-go break being a wonderful throwback), where the groove is stepped up in a george clinton manner with lashings of roger zapp and bootsy collins bass, but on the whole this album reclaims the glory of the p-funk synths from the west coast rap contingency.
let you go has an over the top processed computer-guitar riff, and lots of ‘oh yeahs’, should we still want to party like it’s 1999 all over again, then here’s an updated soundtrack.
then just as you think snax is a one trick pony, he pulls ‘one more’ out of the hat, where a sleazy-n-smokey piano laid back jazz band riff is looped and snax becomes a loved up crooner from the future with a bass line to melt the icecaps. pure and utter brilliance.
as is the album closer, amen brother, where snax lowers the mood, and puts the neon lights on dim once more, for a sultry late night smooch bringing the album to a rather smoothed out finish.
very cool, very funky, very good, and very worthy of regular recycling on your stereo system
out now on tnt recordings