Enter The 37th Chamber

The second album from cinematic funk outfit El Michels Affair is an idiosyncratic project, in which they cover songs from across the Wu-Tang catalogue, the music of which was itself made up of samples of old soul and funk records. The musical palette is classic seventies soul and funk — wah-wah guitars, choppy, syncopated basslines, church-y organs, Stax-flavour horn riffs — all held down by funky boom-bap beats high in the mix. Perhaps understandably bearing in mind the source material, there’s an air of brooding menace that hangs over much of the album, as though the band had also interpreted the slight musical unease and queasiness that often comes from twisting sampled material into new shapes. Spooky and funky in equal measure.