El Michels Affair – 24 Hr Sports (Big Crown) (13th Floor Album Review)

Leon Michels and his El Michels Affair are about to release 24 Hr Sports featuring appearances from Norah Jones, Shintaro Sakamoto, Florence Adooni, Rogê, and Dave Guy, as well as a prominent sample of the late Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Is it worth waiting for? Here is The 13th Floor’s Jeff Neems with an advance listen.

There’s a complex back-story explaining the overlap between the three retro-soul labels Daptone, Truth & Soul and Big Crown. It’s all outlined on Wikipedia, so I won’t go into here – except to say Leon “El” Michels is a constant across the three.

I discovered his music through 2002’s excellent Sounding Out The City, a largely instrumental album by El Michels Affair. That was followed by a long gap while El did other things, including releasing a swag of excellent soul and funk music for other artists including Lee Fields, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley.

This the latest in five straight El Michels Affair albums in the last five years, and I must admit I have not heard the previous four. Maybe I should.

But to cut to the chase, this album was very disappointing   – and I’m a solid fan of what El has done previously. Too much of this steers towards 1980s cheesy TV tunes, lacking the oomph or class of his prior output. Say Goodbye, Indifference and Anticipate are, well, kinda turgid and sappy. And several tunes seem bizarrely short, clocking less than three minutes. Other grumbles are there’s too much 80s synth, the production sounds a bit sloppy in places and…well… it’s just not very interesting.

I understand artists want to evolve, and given the list of unfamiliar names here, I suspect El wanted to give a few folks an opportunity to shine. Perhaps, to some folks ears, he did. But not mine.

An album I won’t be buying or revisiting.

24 Hr Sports is due Friday, Sept 5 on Big Crown Records