Let the vivacious grooves of The Bogie Band and Joe Russo shake any last remaining bits of winter blues out of your body and soul with their new collaboration, The Prophets in The City.
Available tomorrow through Royal Potato Family, this album features Russo and Stuart Bogie leading a collective of only percussion and wind players from the likes of The Dap-Kings, Antibalas, Budos Band, David Byrne’s American Utopia and many others. The eclectic big band rips through jazz funk zones with ease, while often dipping into more psychedelic and Afrobeat territories (often within the same track).
Russo, of whom many readers here would know from his highly respected Grateful Dead tribute band, Almost Dead, brings some Mickey Hart-esque percussive esoterica into the recordings, which is especially evident on the mystically elemental “We Met Them By The Water.” With its gentle pitter-patter bell-like percussion and smoothly soaring sax, this track is a meditative moment of calm between the raucous hurricanes of red hot horns and dance beats that dominate the rest of the record.
With crazed rhythms and an entire ecosystem of harmoniously conversing brass and woodwind instruments, Russo, Bogie and the ten-piece band channel the frenetic energy and the vibrant life of the streets of New York City.
Want to get your neighborhood bopping in style? Just throw your windows open wide and crank this album way up.
Click here to preorder this exhilarating album on vinyl or digital today.
-KH
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