2016 being such a great year for music, it should be no surprise that yet another record has come across my (virtual) desk which has stopped me in my tracks. Specifically, a four-track EP by Nite-Funk; Nite-Funk being a certain Mr Dam-Funk, about whom, presumably on account of my advancing years and receding hipness, I know somewhat less than zip; and a certain Ms Nite Jewel, who engaged my attention some years back with her high-budget-on-a-low-budget electro pop nuggets. She lost me after a while as she crept into an actual high-budget set-up (or "higher" anyway; or maybe she just got more proficient), where I thought she had fallen just a little flat. Anyway, she's back, with an album of her own, and this EP, and in particular this exquisite slice of skeletal funk/soul, bearing as I think it does the gentlest of nods to the late-eighties / early-nineties London (and Bristol) of Soul II Soul and early Massive Attack (a place and time, musically speaking, that I never expected to be thrown back to). Plus, Nite Jewel herself has clearly been spending some of the intervening years working on her singing voice. Here, she soars.
