Archive for January, 2008

I like wordplay and clues more than straightforward narratives or confessionals. A sense of mystery.

Scritti Politti – eMusic Spotlight

(thanks Stephen Schwartz!)

Patiently awaiting new material (a bit funky preferably, mr. Green ) we could not resist the temptation and so we brushed the live clip from Robert E. Lee with oil and dusted it with powder (Marco tuned it up little bit).

We haven’t dissected the lyrics yet, but according to our history book Robert E. Lee was a prominent confederate general. Any suggestions about the lyrics are welcome.

Robert-e-lee-live.mp3

Some more clips from the Christmas party in the Luminaire last Decembre came our way. And this time they are way bigger!

The Robert E Lee song, 2 collaborations with Alexis, some clip named Casio (dont’t really know if thatis the name.. someone?) and a little scritti chrismas ditty…

Scritti Christmas party part 2, Luminaire, December 17, 2007

Ooh… and the other clips posted the other day are updated too!
Scritti Christmas party, Luminaire, December 17, 2007

Here’s a recent interview with David Gamson which was send to us.

David talks about Scritti, Roger Troutman and Meshell N’degeocello. It is from a ToddCast. Have a listen:

david_gamson-interview-2007.mp3

Recently (well, er, uhm 3 months ago, which is actually not too long calculated in Scritti time) a rather nice cover of Scritti Politti’s Oh Patti surfaced on YouTube, done by a band called “The Soil Scientists”. We got into contact with Al, who basically is “The Soil Scientists” on his own and asked him about his fascination with Scritti Politti.

Why the fascination with Scritti Politti ? Good question! Well, I first started listening to their early stuff when I was quite young, perhaps around 13 or 14 years old (I’m now 24). Around then I was very much into he early ‘Brit funk’ records from that era, such as Shakatak, Level 42 etc. What struck me straight away about Scritti was the uniqueness of their sound, and how completely different their approach to song writing was to most of the other Brit funk records at that time. Wheras bands such as Level 42 seemed to take much of their influence from the very esoteric 70’s jazz funk scene (Weather Report, Miles Davis and such), tunes like ‘Wood Beez’ were very influenced by American r&b, break-beat and early hip hop records. In essence, I admired them for experimenting with the type of music that no other English artist of the time was willing to dabble with. I love most of their stuff, but for that reason those records that are most special to me are the mid 80’s ones.

As for The soil scientists, the ‘band’ as such at the moment is really just me – all of the songs on youtube were overdubbed on a digital 8 track, with me playing all the instruments. The album as such isn’t quite finished; I’ve just started a Phd in Southampton, so could be a rather long time (red : we are pretty much used to that phenomenon) The ‘Soil Scientists’ comes from the name of a jazz group I was in in sixth form. We used to do an instrumental cover of ‘oh patti’ that I arranged, so I thought I’d re-record it under the same band name for old time’s sake!

More Soil Scientists : Sugar and Spice & Sally Says