RHUM

It’s always been an ambition of mine to have a jazz funeral, one of those slow street marches where everyone’s singing Just a Closer Walk with Thee before breaking into New Second Line – just like in Live and Let Die, except without Roger Moore or Baron Samedi. It would literally be the coolest way to go. A morbid way to start this review, admittedly, but hey. The jazz funeral, of course, originated in New Orleans, as did Galactic – a band I’ll fess-up and admit I’d never heard of before until Ya-Ma-Kay. Boy have I been missing out.

The word ‘band’ is perhaps a little misleading, musical collective fits better. Imagine a Buena Vista Social Club for crunk MCs, dope turntableists, baile funkateers, Delta Blues guitarists, samba drummers, Creole jazz horn-blowers and soul divas and you might just get Galactic picture. It’s exactly the kind of eclectic melting pot of styles and cultures that New Orleans is famous for. And the fact that these guys have been going for over twenty years, in one shape or another, makes my previous general ignorance to their existence near criminal.

Loosely genre-ised as ‘bounce’, a form of Deep South hiphop birthed from the loins of The Big Easy, Ya-Ma-Kay is the sort of album that gives you hope for the moribund state of American…scratch that, *cringes*… urban music in its global entirety. The effortless freshness of this record exudes from the very first beat to the final fade out, with every one of the 15 tracks here as different, distinctive and, most importantly, collectively coherent as the last.
If this sounds like I’m gushing, well that’s because I am. Galactic have completely gobsmacked me with their awesomeness. Buy this record. Seriously. It’s fucking immense.

5/5

Standout Tracks: Friends of Science, Do it Again, You Don’t Know

Ya-Ma-Kay is out on Anti-Australia through Shock records on February 10th