El Michels Affair: 'Enter The 37th Chamber'

It goes without saying that hip-hop is fundamentally a postmodern experiment. It is engaged in a dialogue with all pop music which has preceded it. Hip-hop is not just pop music - it is a commentary on pop music. It exists within it, but also beyond it, outside of it. For hip-hop, the vinyl record represents not the end of the creative process, but the beginning. Hip-hop's relationship with musical history is hands-on. Hip-hop re-arranges and re-contextualizes the past. It manipulates, cuts and pastes. It deconstructs. Hip-hop is irreverent, does not recognise does accepted 'high' & 'low' categorisations of musical forms - any and every record, from every imaginable genre, is approached as a legitimate source of sampleable material. It is the end of history, and everything is up for grabs.

So dig this. New York funk outfit El Michels Affair have produced an LP which consists almost exclusively of instrumental cover versions of Wu Tang Clan tracks, tracks which themselves consist almost exclusively of samples lifted from old funk & soul LPs...and it is produced to sound largely like authentic 70s soul. Postmodern enough for ya? Theoretically this could mean that the Affair's version of 'C.R.E.A.M' (an album highlight) just sounds exactly like an instrumental version of The Charmel's majestic Stax/Volt single 'As Long As I've Got You', from which the main 'C.R.E.A.M' loop is lifted. Infact, the Affair have wisely chosen to use the specific samples lifted for the Wu Tang tracks covered here more as jumping-off points for their own experiments and jams...therefore the Affair's 'C.R.E.A.M' sounds neither exactly like the Wu's original version, or the song it samples, but references both.

More important than any of this high-brow nonsense is that 'Enter The 37th Chamber' is a super-funky LP in its own right (perfect late-night listening) and could be enjoyed by any funk fan, regardless of how much or how little interest they have in the Wu Tang - in some respects, maybe a lack of interest in the 'concept' would benefit the listener. The concept is so mind-bogglingly genius that it's quite hard for a nerd like me to judge the album objectively...the idea of a cookin' funk combo doing wild, live versions of old Wu Tang joints is so ace that the album itself inevitably struggles to live up to it's own hype. The Affair have produced what is undoubtedly a fine 'cinematic soul' (their phrase) LP, peppered with some excellent moments ('Shimmy Shimmy Ya', featuring a children's choir, is guaranteed floor-filling club madness)...but personally I've found myself too caught up in the IDEA to enjoy it on its own terms. This probably says more about me than it does about the album....which, like I say, it really pretty great...but maybe not as great as the IDEA promised it could be....you can see how I'm having trouble with this.

Look: this album's really cool, it's a cool idea, and if you're home with your feet up and a bottle of cheap red, you'll be well into it. Shoulda covered '4th Chamber' though.