Sahara Swing
Released
It’d be impossible to talk about funk revivalism without bringing up Jan and Max Weissenfeldt (a.k.a the Whitefield Brothers), the Munich-based groove scholars who woodshedded their way into tons of indie-hip-hoppers’ crates with their group Poets of Rhythm. It’d be even more impossible to even mention all their aliases and side projects in a reasonable amount of space, so why not focus on Karl Hector and the Malcouns, the pseudonymous Jan-led Afro-and-elsewhere-beat group that shines by evoking rather than imitating. Sahara Swing lets its pan-African influences — Nigerian grooves, Ethiopian melodies, and the all-important American on-the-one — sound more like a fair trade fusion than a colonizer snatch-and-grab.