Sunday 21 February 2010

Parliament - Rhenium


Anyone for some psychedelic funk/soul accompanied by bagpipes,yodeling,harps, jews harp,steel guitars,doo-wop,choirs and the genius of Eddie Hazel ? This is an early 90s' issue of Parliament's debut album "Osmium" with three non album singles added and renamed for some strange reason "Rhenium". "Osmium" was not surprisingly ignored on release in 1970 and has since been sampled to death by De La Soul and others.Although often labeled as a funk classic this skips across so many genres its beyond labeling and it doesn't ever sound like a band trying out different badly fitting outfits as it all works well together,retaining a sort of playful feel throughout probably due to the production of George Clinton .
Hard to pick highlights as I love it all even the ,probably intentionally, dumb nursery rhyme lyrics to "Funky Woman" - sample - "She threw them in the sink , the sink began to stink ....... Funky Woman " and "She threw them in the air , the air said this ain't fair"....... Funky Woman" all with church organ and some mean guitar playing. It even has a sort of come down track at the end, "The Silent Boatman" ,this is the one with the bagpipes.

Wiki here. Definitely one for the collection Here .


Good excuse too for a bit of this ......

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