Lo Fidelity Allstars
SXSW Records
Reviewed by Marc Savlov, Fri., March 15, 2002
Lo Fidelity Allstars
Don't Be Afraid of Love (Skint/Columbia) Oh, great, now they tell me. 1999's How to Operate With a Blown Mind -- with its churning single "Battle Flag" -- was a shot to the musical solar plexus, thick and powerful, a syrupy amalgam of raw funk and bass-heavy big beat. It rocked, they toured, and that was that. Now with a new frontman, Leeds DJ Phil Ward replacing the MIA Dave Randall, and a new, less ominous mix, the LoFi's sound almost like a different group entirely. Whereas Blown Mind employed dark, almost Spartan beats, this outing is a far more upbeat affair. There's a heavy, unmistakably classic funk groove to much of the material here; the slow, brassy "On the Pier" features no less than Bootsy Collins, and the wah-wah'd-all-to-hell "Somebody Needs You," with Afghan Whig Greg Dulli might as well be on the soundtrack to the next Tarantino flick for all the sloshy Detroit sugar it's stuck in. Is this the death of traditional big beat? Hardly. Norman Cook and the Skint crew have always been obsessed with da funk -- come to think of it, "Feel What I Feel" and "Lo Fi's in Ibiza" smack of Daft Punk's goofy take on the Seventies -- and this is simply the next level, mixing up Marvin Gaye's liquid love with sticky gobs of honey-coated groove. No longer content to make you cower beneath a fusillade of titanic beats and serpentine basslines, the LoFi's have discovered love (in Leeds, of all places) and are on a newfound mission to make you fall for it, too, you beautiful thing, you. (Thursday, March 14, La Zona Rosa, midnight)
