Jungle – Don’t Play

Album : Volcano

Label : Caiola Records
© 2023 Caiola Records under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings Ltd

Returning to the “heart” of Jungle on their previous long format For Ever in 2021, which marked their emancipation from the XL label, Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland bring their project into a “free spirit” zone with this fourth album. An improvised side that we find from the start with the voice that seems cut and pasted of their faithful singer Lydia Kitto on Holding On and Candle Flame in feat with the rapper Erick the Architect. This collage work is 100% assumed by the duo, who take their references from Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers, as with the London rapper Roots Manuva, who came to perform a slam in the studio and who ends up as a sweeper car on the funky beat of You Ain’t No Celebrity. Same on I’ve Been in Love, the most suave track on the record, for which they recovered a piece of vocals from Channel Tres, the Compton artist who revives hip-house, but recorded for another song.

With short and effective pieces, the Jungle demonstrate once again that they know the codes of soul and funk from the cellar to the attic, between the retro Back on 74, a tribute to the pioneers of 70’s soul with this frankly irresistible, or the featuring with JNR Williams, who forms an old-fashioned soul-jazz duo with Lydia Kitto on Good at Breaking Hearts.

© Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz