King Britt presents
“The Philadelphia Experiment” (remixed)
(RopeADope Records)
Disclaimer: I am in no way authorized or competent enough to offer any credible opinions on the world of DJ’s, dub, jazz or any contemporary fusion of the three. That said, this is thoroughly impressive. To understand this release properly, one has to understand there is first an album called, ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’ that resulted from four masters of different flavors of funk (Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson (drums), Christian McBride (bass), Uri Caine (Keyboards) and Pat Martino (guitar)), without preparation, locked themselves together for three days to create the album. The band decided to allow a DJ to remix the sessions and chose King Britt (most recognizable as the Digable Planets DJ). With some guest producers lending influence on certain tracks, the album takes on many flavors, while maintaining a unifying funky/jazzy-ness playing off the more atmospheric flavorings of the keyboards. Obviously, as with most music of this nature, some tracks are repetitive and self-indulgent, taking forever to bring the listener through the journey of the song (the track ‘Philadelphia Experiment (DJ Ghe Remix) blew the vibe of the disk up until that point and is the track skipper here). The draw for the novice DJ listener is that most all these song hit with a fairly upbeat and pumping tempo, but completely bypassing ‘thump thump thump’ of the DJ club staple. Much more jazzy and loose here. I swiped this out of the pile and claimed it for the Bushman. Not sure if there is any credibility to that, but it’s the first piece of DJ culture that I’ve claimed for my own listening pleasure. And a pleasure to listen this most definitely is.
