With previous releases on the mighty Bearfunk and Noid labels, Afrobutt returns with a new longplayer on the fantastic Electric Minds label. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Afrobutt, he’s the ass-fixated moniker (What, no re-work of Sir Mix-A-Lots ‘I Like Big Butts’ we hear you say?) of Bear Entertainment and Ambassadors Reception grande-fromage – Steve Kotey, who’s sleazed out disco sound goes all Ray Mears as he ventures into space before returning to the jungle to report his findings to his fellow tribesmen.
The result is ‘Wunderbutt’, a collection of shimmering cosmic and calypso disco that leaves no stone unturned, featuring elements of dub, italo, cosmic and latin rearranging them into disco dynamite.
The album kicks off with ‘Urgent Workout Required’ taking you on a journey through the darkest recesses of Andromeda. You could almost imagine Afrobutt recruiting Danielle Baldelli as co-pilot and John Carpenter as flight engineer. Still deep in space, ‘Feast Your Eyes’ takes a right turn heading directly into an asteroid belt as the controls are slowed down into chuggier territory as shimmering synths and humanoid vocal snippets put you deep into a hypnotic state of suspended animation. Imagine Ganymed dueting with Bappi Lahiri (With Afrobutt tweaking the delays) in that sleazy bar from Star Wars and the result is ‘Banger Disco’. ‘Lucifer Went To Church’ and ‘Gee Keeps On’ continues to ensure your feet are strictly glued to the dancefloor until we finally reach planet Earth and ‘Kali Dreams’ where we land in the tropics with the funky bass, steel drums and wah’d up guitars which could quite easily sit on the ‘African Suite’ LP. ‘Torro De Butt’ moves over to South America where the low down dirty funk and latin elements keep those chica butts shaking. Looped to infinity ‘The Taste (Round & Brown)’ updates the French disco sound of the 90′s (Minus the filters) adding more of a cosmic edge and the only tracks that feel somewhat like ‘filler’ are the over repetitive (Without going nowhere) ‘Morning Bump’ and the minimal (Not in a MNML sense) ‘Cracks All Gone’ which don’t do enough to inspire in comparison to the accomplished disco-centric feel of the rest of the album.
A heady mix of space-disco, calypso soul and jungle funk, ‘Wunderbutt’ goes a long way to satisfy a wide range of styles and after the first few listens we came away feeling as though we’d stumbled across a few lost gems from the likes of Kid Creole & Arpadys which speaks volumes on how appealing this album will be to both DJ’s and home listeners alike.
‘Winderbutt’ is out on Electric Minds and scheduled for release on 23rd February 2009 but in the meantime you can catch Steve Kotey DJ’ing alongside Doaln Bergin, Free Disco and Daniel Stefanik at Sosho in Shoreditch on February 21st where you’ll no doubt here plenty of fresh material getting dropped onto the lovely Funktion 1 sound system they have installed. For more details on this party visit their Facebook group which you can find HERE.
Wunderbutt Tracklisting:
- Urgent Workout Required (4m 19s)
- Feast Your Eyes (4m 56s)
- Banger Disco (6m 49s)
- Lucifer Went To Church (6m 04s)
- Gee Keeps On (4m 39s)
- Kali Dreams (5m 44s)
- Torro De Butt (6m 06s)
- The Taste (Round & Brown) (6m 0s)
- Morning Bump (4m 49s)
- Cracks All Gone (6m 01s)
- Disco Mudma (5m 41s)
- Wunderbutt (9m 20s)
- Take The Bus (7m 32s)