VA - Black Feeling: Volume Two (2011)

Back in September 2007, Freestyle Records released Black Feeling an album project brought to life by Australian musical supremo Lance Ferguson, the man responsible for Freestyle soul-jazz organ trio Cookin On 3 Burners, as well as The Bamboos & Lanu projects on Tru Thoughts Recordings.

Each track was presented under a pseudonym to give the impression of an album you would find whilst digging in a Caribbean record shop or American thrift store. As a collection of reworked classics, the album set dance floors alight across the world, indeed, the single Hippy Skippy Moon Strut by The Mighty Show-Stoppers became a huge selling 12 inch, and also notched up well over 350,000 individual viewings on You Tube to date!

Now in 2011, Freestyle Records is pleased as punch to be releasing this follow up album, The main concept with the 'Black Feeling' cover versions is that the finished product should not just be some kind of carbon copy of an established classic and Lance explains his approach further: ?The initial study of the original recordings enables me to be freer with interpreting, re-arranging and changing them for the final album. Often I will make changes to make a track a little more attractive or usable for DJs and the dancefloor in general?

And you can certainly hear that in regards to the first two tracks ?Shaft In Africa? and ?Burning Spear? as their bottom end and drum breaks are beefed up to give funk heads and B Boys maximum opportunity to throw shapes to their hearts content! In direct comparison to those up tempo dance floor stormers, the album also features more reflective moments, namely the versions of Ronnie Fosters 'Mystic Brew' and ?Oboe' by Jamaican keyboard King Jackie Mittoo, whose gentle, skanking feel is like a warm Caribbean breeze cooling you down, and Lances tactic of shifting a classic tune into another genre is a masterstroke as exemplified on the salsa version of 'Nautilus' on which keyboardist Simon Mavin injects his incredible latin piano skills to stunning effect.

The entire album sparkles with energy and display an intelligent and varied approach to reworking much loved classic as Lance states: ?I think it's really important to flip the cover-versions up and offer the listener something new so often I'll change instrumentation around to achieve something unique?. And something unique is what he and his crew of top musical talent have achieved - welcome to Black Feeling Two!.