Soul Parlor - The Way We Talk

This album is a little known gem that wouldn't sound out of place if it had been released on Compost or Sonar Kollektiv. If Jazzanova had a more funk-driven sound, rather than a jazz-driven one, it would sound something like this.

My only real complaint is that this album is about 10-15 minutes too long. By the time you get to Parlor Lude 06, you’ve heard everything that Soul Parlor can do. Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the album is still solid, with ‘That Something’ and ‘Spacer’ being two of the album’s highlights, but I find myself listening to the first half of this album, then coming back to the second half at a later stage. There isn’t a lot of variation from track to track – the instrumentation, tempo and construction of each track stays relatively the same, but Soul Parlor (and in particular Korben Dallas) know their preferred genre extremely well. The album is mixed quite dryly, particularly over the drums, giving it a quite an intimate, lounge room feel.

‘Friday’ is a strong opener and another of the disc’s highlights. It features sampled flutes and some effective (and effectED) percussion programming laid over sampled funk drums, shakers and keyboard pads. This is probably a good summary of the what’s on offer here, and also brings to light the Soul Parlor’s biggest issue here – where’s the live instruments?! There are a handful of nebulous credits on the back cover (“Claude [EVP on ‘Peanuts’]” for example), but they’re so few in number that it’s hardly worth mentioning. What Lotz and Müller needed to do was recruit a small live band for the project – drums, bass, live organ (ie. not sampled or a synth preset), some additional percussion (bongos, congas, shakers etc), even some live guitar. What they needed, in point of fact, was exactly what Dzihan & Kamien did with their ‘Live In Vienna’ album. While their programming and sampling is right on the money most of the time, and you can pick out the odd live instrument and vocal here and there, you just can’t beat a live band with some electronic flourishes added in post-production for this style of music.

Overall, ‘The Way We Talk’ is a very consistent and enjoyable album, though it is overly long and could do with less sampling and more live instrumentation. It’d be interesting to hear what Soul Parlor could come up with as a follow up to this album, as they’ve got a very nice groove happening on this album. Though overly long, the album flows nicely from start to finish with only two or three average tracks. The highlights for me include:

Friday
Fly By Night
It’s Alright
We’ve Got Sneakers On
Peanuts
Prove Positive

If you’re already a fan of this style, then you could do a lot worse than check this album out, as it is does have a slightly different take on the deep house/future jazz/future funk sound (thankfully!). If you’re after an introduction, then start with Compost Records, OM Records, Naked Music, Dzihan & Kamien, Jazzanova, or some of the more established deep house/future jazz labels and artists.