Shawn Lee's Ping-Pong Orchestra - World Of Funk
While I'm very familiar with Shawn Lee's fantastic other band Young Gun Silver Fox (a Hall & Oates-styled yacht rock duo with Andy Platts), this World Of Funk album is a very different beast and a pleasant surprise for me, as it let me dive a little deeper and see a different side of an artist I was already atleast half-familiar with.
As a funk experience, this fares way better than the Bootsy Collins album. Partly because it sticks to a consistent aesthetic, but also because even within the worldbeat / Curtis Mayfield hybridized stylings here there's a whole spectrum of different sounds being explored here. Lots of instruments, synthesizers here and there and that sound crosshatched from three different subgenres.
I appreciated the fact that this is definitely less of a song-by-song experience and more of a full album ride. Generally, one of the things that draws me to genres like 80's and 90's R&B, smooth jazz, yacht rock, progressive rock, etc. is that all these genres demonstrate clear melodic identities within their respective frameworks and emphasize individual song identity. So the easiest way to gel with the material here was to approach it like you would an experimental mood piece or ambient music.
Unlike a lot of what I enjoy however, this is something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and even though you can sense a bit of R&B and smooth jazz, they are only minor accents to a cologne with a very different demographic in mind.
When dealing with more free-form excursions like World Of Funk, an album that could be the ideal soundtrack to a jittery 70's thriller where James Bond and Shaft get lost in the now defunct city of Kowloon...the criteria is definitely different. And as a free flowing experience, this is a great trip indeed.
8.5 out of 10
Last edited by Anteater; 05-28-2017 at 08:39 PM.
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