Adrian Younge & Venice Dawn – Two Hearts Combine
Adrian Younge is the mastermind behind the retro soul masterpiece soundtrack to the retro-blaxploitation masterpiece Black Dynamite! Recently he’s been revisiting earlier work and blending it together with the his more recent material to create the sound you hear on Something About April. The album plays like a concept record focused on the ups and downs of an interracial couple in the late 1960s (for more on the real thing and the couple that made it possible for interracial couples to marry legally in the US, definitely check for the documentary “The Loving Story” premiering on Valentine’s Day on HBO!). One of things that’s interesting is that in some ways the record itself is a mix of retro 1960s style with post-1990s production, a kind of post-modern retro soul record, if that’s possible. “Two Hearts Combine” shows a bit of this, like a fantasy collaboration between the Brand New Heavies and Rotary Connection with production work from Geoff Barrows of Portishead. One of my favorite records of this brand new year and something, even at this early stage, I can almost 100% guarantee will be on my year-end best of list.