In the vast crowd of rediscovered seventies funk, this 1971 album on the legendary Westbound Records from Detroit six-piece funk outfit The Counts stands head and shoulders above many of its peers and is an outstanding example of early 70s street funk very much deserving of its remastering and rerelease. You get six tracks, four standard-length singles and two extended psychedelic vamps, every moment dripping with thick, steaming, swampy, purest essence of funk. 

What sets this album apart is a simple combination of the production and the playing, and maybe the confident swagger that underlies the whole thing helps too. The congas, snare and kick drums, the shakers and bass — all the elements of the rhythm section — seem especially well separated in the mix for 1971, all coming through clearly particularly on the remastered version, so there’s a heavy-weight, semi-irresistible danceability right to the fore. The playing — guitar, horns, organ — is just super-tight, making for a great example of the dichotomy of funk music: funk is always described as loose, free, dirty, raw, all of which is true, but that loose, raw feel is actually achieved through extreme precision playing and micro-managed high-quality multi-tracking recording. As each track on What’s Up Front That Counts fades out it’s easy to imagine the band, recognising the quality of their groove, simply digging in and carrying on playing long after the tape stopped recording. An essential funk album.