Those Virginia boys Butcher Brown have been busy cobbling together some new cuts for their next album. They hadn’t announced a new disc just yet but this retro-inclined, self-described purveyors of “garage punk jazz funk” just the other day cut loose one of those tracks for public consumption/enjoyment.
Butcher Brown’s music is very evocative of R&B, Quiet Storm and fusion of the 1970s and ’80s but these are musicians who grew up in a later time. They remember “Who Got Da Props?” by the 90’s rap group Black Moon and traced the sample back to its origin of almost 20 years earlier, “Tidal Wave” by Ronnie Laws.
This deep cut came from Laws’ 1975 debut funk-jazz extravaganza Pressure Sensitive, the record that brought us a true diamond of the genre, “Always There.” “Tidal Wave,” with a Rhodes-drenched hypnotic pulse, has its own thing goin’ – that thing which inspired a fledgling hip-hop group from Brooklyn to make a single from it, and brought Laws’ song to a younger and much wider audience.
But no rendition has the flawless sheen Butcher Brown brings to it; this one’s smoother than cream cheese on a hot bagel. Good call by Butcher Brown for bringing such a fresh groove from the mid-’70s out of obscurity, as Black Moon did a generation ago.
