Soul Clap / Sphynx: So Sedated / Azul
Bastard Jazz Recordings

Excerpted from Bastard Jazz Recordings' forthcoming Tempo Dreams Volume 3 compilation, Soul Clap's “So Sedated” offers a preview of what one might expect from the full album Boston residents Charles Levine and Eli Goldstein have assembled for the label. It's one of two cuts on the seven-inch vinyl single, with the other side occupied by “Azul,” a non-compilation cut from Italian producers Sphynx.

Active under the Soul Clap name since 2001, Levine and Goldstein certainly know their way around a club track, and no better proof of that is needed than “So Sedated.” A sultry funk-soul number guaranteed to induce a swoon or two, the seductive cut's enhanced by Dayonne Rollins' restrained vocal contribution and a plethora of trippy, Moog-styled synthesizer treatments. A different species of animal entirely, Sphynx's “Azul” unabashedly leaps back to the ‘80s for a frothy electro workout replete with squiggly synths, squelchy bass, echo-drenched claps, and a classic B-Boy drum machine groove. Like many a single, the release is short at eight minutes, but the tunes, Soul Clap's especially, are memorable.

April 2015