She’s Got Soul
New Sector Movements
Turn It Up, 2004
I’ve been meaning to post this song for a long time. Turn It Up is the second album from New Sector Movements which is one of the many projects (or aliases) of prolific London producer IG Culture. And I wonder if it might be the last, as newsectormovements.com, which was linked to in a March ‘04 article now displays a Network Solutions page (although the NSM myspace has been logged into today).
The first NSM album (Download This) was pretty squarely in the Broken Beat sphere but the second one sounds more like an R&B album from 2020 (or at least the direction I wish for popular music). It features Eska, who’s voice I cannot get enough of, on six tracks (and all four of my favorites on the album). IG also produced “La Guerre,” my favorite song (by far) on the Les Nubians’ 2003 One Step Forward album. It could easily blend in on this album, perhaps forecasting where he was going with NSM.
It was hard to pick which song to post but I chose this one because I love the way the melody in the verses sounds like cascading waves but perhaps more importantly because I appreciate that it acknowledges that this future soul album (and the rest of the more out-there music that IG & Eska create) is all part of the black music continuum and inspired by it. In this particular case, female soul singers, which Eska names by first name in the choruses:
Ella (Fitzgerald), Sarah (Vaughn), Nina (Simone), Syreeta (Wright), Billie (Holiday), (???), Brenda (Russell), Chaka (Khan), Gladys (Knight), Berta (Roberta Flack), Deniece (Williams), Patrice (Rushen), Sandra (Cassandra Wilson?), Angie (Stone), (???), Brandy (?).
If anyone can fill in the blanks, please leave a comment.
Listen to it loud (and maybe late at night) or you might miss the magic.
>> songs are available for two weeks [6.0 MB]
