Download: Dam-Funk “Toeachizown”

(from Toeachizown out now on Stones Throw)

This first installment of a projected two-and-a-half-hour debut is a forty-minute aural core-sample of L.A.’s deep nighttime groove from this electro-funk metaphysician. What Stones Throw PR calls “boogie funk” and the synth-gilded Philly disco of the early 1980s are but shimmering sonic cousins, as evidenced by the mad romantic swoop of “Let’s Take Off, Far Away!” to the title track’s Frankie Smith caper at the outset. The last half takes on an alluringly hard and impersonally sexy vibe, as the late new wave lethality of “Tunnels” yields to “Searchin’ for Funk’s Future,” a tense romp down a conjectural genre corridor that closes out proceedings far from anyone’s crate-digger heritage. Not even Shuggie Otis ever got so far into the abstract ozone as Dam-Funk does here, with the manic karma-mechanics at the end fading out like a warehouse party you just left two right turns ago. This is funk digitalized for a portable and far-grittier age in which a party—or other terminal action adventure—is not far and likely searching for you.

—Ron Garmon