Traffic Entertainment / Sleeping Bag
1981
24 24 Music
About This Album
Of all the posthumous recordings in Arthur Russell's voluminous legacy, the Dinosaur L recordings from 1981, titled 24-24 Music on the original Sleeping Bag Records imprint, are the most delightful to listen to. While it's true in one way they are not the most musically sophisticated of his many recordings -- and this is not a disclaimer -- in another way they are. Who ever heard of improvisational disco in 1981? The tunes here (at the time they were issued simply with numbered titles, and here are restored to their original names) are a series of preprogrammed beats, which change every 24 bars, hence the title of the album. The band (which included the Ingram Family, James, Timmy, William, and of course Butch, in the rhythm section) had to improvise everything else on top of the beats: from guitar lines, horns, vocals, keyboard vamps, basslines, all of it! The Ingrams were an established act, and had worked with Russell and Will Socolov on the Loose Joints sessions the year before and were used to Russell's wonderfully inventive quirks. What follows here is a wonderful intersection of funk, disco, downtown and big biz funk improv, no wave playfulness, and (sometimes) monotonous drum loops that create backdrops for people either to get busy or get lost.
Track List (try tracks 1 and 4)

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