Moodymann - Mahogany Brown

A sort of sonic psychogeographic dispatch from late ‘90s Detroit, if you will, Mahogany Brown offers a unique, documentarian perspective on house music as it comes thru its teenaged years from a localised, Black, Latino and Gay club phenomenon to its currency as a soundtrack to dancefloors worldwide, and then back to root in one of the cities that first cradled it’s birth along with Chicago and New York. Equal parts collage, club tools and headphone staples, it unfolds like a hot sticky day in the 313; traversing from the dial-scrolling Radio to the kiddies chorus percolating thru Sunshine, to the reportage of On The Run and M.E.A.N.D.N.J.B.’s gospel soul jazz burn starring longtime accomplice Norma Jean Bell, thru the sublime suspension system of Mahogany Brown, onto the distorted, faded Stonedenjoe (House) and his Black Sunday masterpiece melding gospel, soul and disco like no other at the album’s finale, this record is every inch a classic. No arguing.