Rotary Connection

Released

Rotary Connection is three bands in one: a devastating vocal group led by Minnie Riperton, a savage Chicago house band that backed a bunch of legends on electric Chess blues albums in the late Sixties and early seventies, and stone cold visionary Charles Stepney, a producer you should know if you like pop music. That mysterious new group, Sault? That’s essentially a revival of the Stepney approach: lots of intense harmonies, sick backbeat, lunatic orchestrations. Here they take on two Stones songs, Sam & Dave, Dylan, and a scattering of oddities. The most concise thing I can say is that Stepney records are divided between so many approaches that calling them soul or pop or rock or funk does no good. You will think of records that sound very little like this.

Sasha Frere-Jones