The New Mastersounds- The Nashville Session (2016)

True to their retro agenda, British four-piece funksters The New Mastersounds recorded this well honed set live in the studio in front of an audience made up of invited fans, whisked the tapes to the vinyl pressing plant with orders to punch out no more than one thousand copies and loaded their gear into the back of the tour-van as they have been doing for more than fifteen years. Their experience shows on these tightly crafted songs which have been selected from a back catalogue of ten studio albums, each track road-tested and arriving here highly nuanced and packed full of grooves powered by just guitar, organ, bass and drums. Originally conceived as dance-floor fillers, new rhythmic ideas have crusted on over time like sediment accretions presenting metrically challenging sections that may trip up those punters seeking to shake their asses unaccosted. These guys are such pros that even though they have clearly performed the tunes here hundreds of times nothing slips into auto-pilot, there is too much variety within the music for minds to wander. Despite the initial vinyl-only release, it is thankfully now available online. It definitely deserves to be experienced by more than one-thousand pairs of ears.