Love Is The Message / I Can't Turn Around / Stand On The Word (7" Edits By Mr. K) Record Store Day Saturday, September 26, 2020
Love Is The Message / I Can't Turn Around (7" Edit By Mr. K) Most Excellent Unltd
Special limited 7" vinyl only release on Record Store Day Saturday, September 26, 2020
@ www.mostexcellentunlimited.com
A must have 7"... this is a big one! Although Danny Krivit had a few well-regarded edits on wax before "Love Is The Message," it was his head-turning cut-up of MFSB's masterpiece on TD records that put him firmly and irrevocably on the scene as a go-to man with the razor. The song was already well-established, but existed in many manifestations. Krivit's version focussed on Leon Huff's rippling electric piano solo & breakdown of the powerhouse rhythm section of Earl Young and company, a much anticipated highlight for subsequent generations of disco devotees. For its debut on 7-inch, Krivit has trimmed his famed original mix down to a fully functional five and a half minutes, a tight distillation of an undisputed classic of the genre. While the four-on-the-floor drums of Earl Young are rightly cited as key inspiration for the rhythmic style of house music, the flip side of Mr. K's new 7-inch showcases another immediate predecessor, this one recorded more than 1,000 miles southwest of the discos of New York and Philadelphia. "I Can't Turn Around" is the final track on Isaac Hayes's 1975 Chocolate Chip LP, and it builds steam like a locomotive, until the Memphis musicians of the Isaac Hayes Movement are open throttle on a hypnotically repeating orchestral funk riff. The song was a huge favorite in Chicago's Warehouse and its subsequent incarnation The Music Box, and the direct inspiration for early house hits by Steve "Silk" Hurley and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk. Krivit's edit is lean and tough, with all the fat surgically trimmed and nothing but the gloriously relentless vamp remaining, a fierce force that has left countless dancefloors in sweaty disarray.
Stand On The Word (7" Edits By Mr. K) Most Excellent Unltd
Special limited 7" vinyl only release on Record Store Day Saturday, September 26, 2020
@ www.mostexcellentunlimited.com
Gospel music has had a long relationship with the underground dance floors of New York and New Jersey, sharing an emotionally charged spirituality that is central to devotees of each. Sitting at the nexus of these worlds is "Stand On The Word," a praise song that opens an album privately pressed by the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights in 1982. Who exactly recontextualized the churchly platter for the spiritual dance floor is a matter of some contention. Was it the born-again Walter Gibbons, a member of the congregation who lived nearby at the time, and then perhaps Tony Humphries, who worked at a local record store that carried the LP? But in an ocean of gospel dance music, this one distinctively sticks out as an underground dance classic. For this special release, Mr. K has trimmed his rare Japan only "Stand On The Word" 12" release from the crystalline intro to the beloved standout vocal lines to an ear-catching alternate piano outro, making it readily attainable on 7-inch for the first time. An astounding acapella fills the flip side with crackling handclaps and thundering foot-stomps, sounding as if it was recorded at church, or the final hour of the 718 Sessions (same thing). A better example of the sacred and secular crossover connection would be difficult to find.
