Enter Ancient Astronauts boasting their debut full-length record We Are To Answer; cosmic beats, bass lines thumping, Afro-funk pulse, down-tempo grooves, hard-hitting electro jolts, vocal maneuvering from Pharcyde, Tippa Arie and Azeem. Yes, indeed, Ancient Astronauts, a German duo that has as much to do with DJ/rupture as to do with old-school hip-hop, refuse genre definition. The best part - it works. It's natural and organic. The production of recently-released We Are to Answer forces nothing and flows at its own pace.
"Everybody" anachronistically flies back to an era of 1970s Afro-funk, choosing to appropriate and amplify the era's appeal rather than imitate it.
The thumping cadence of "Classic [ft.Pharcyde]" is reminiscent of DJ Premier's best work. As always, Pharcyde's Imani & Bootie Brown's seamless flow donates infectious edge to the song's unrelenting pulse.
It has long been assumed that Sun Records founder Sam Phillips didn't like gospel music because he discouraged his greatest discoveries, including Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, from recording spiritual music for his Memphis label in the 1950s. But it turns out Phillips loved gospel music -- he just didn't think he could successfully market it in the mid-1950s when his rock and country records were exploding onto the charts.
"It certainly wasn't intentional neglect," Phillips says of Sun's lack of gospel focus in the liner notes to "Sun Gospel," a CD retrospective from Germany's invaluable reissue label Bear Family Records. "But you have to compromise. There is no telling what I could and should have done with gospel music from the Memphis area. I'm ashamed to say I barely touched the surface."
"Sun Gospel" contains 31 gospel recordings from Sun's vaults...
