Emotional Rescue and Konduko’s final series of the music of Noel Williams / King Sporty, looking at later electro productions, homes in on the hip hop / boogie influenced Sun Country. With vocals and co-production by long-time partner Betty Wright, this infectious rarity comes in vocal and instrumental and a long form remix by Bay Area disco dub stalwarts, 40 Thieves.
A long way from his Jamaican root in reggae and soul, Noel Williams is rightly lauded for his releases of funk and disco, through to electro, but more he is heralded in the Miami music history as the godfather of Miami Bass. Sun Country exemplifies that, this homage to the warm climbs of the Sunshine State, utilises the electronic emulations of the breakbeat, claps accenting the backbeat, as a showcase to the TR-808 drum machine.
Highlighting the shift from disco to the influence of hip hop, with funk and boogie, the TR-808’s low frequencies and handclaps underpin the almost deadpan delivery of Wright’s vocals. Released on subsidiary Tashamba Records, it was part of a highly successful electro period for Williams.
The Instrumental stretches things out even more, the interplay of the electronics, bass, vocal samples, scratching and fx, using the vox as a cut up, percussive element of its own. The programming and sequencing, with light reverb, delay and phasing, create enough synthetic ensemble for the synthesized strings.
As with all the Konduko 12” series, the B side is given to contemporary artists that can bring a mix of the old and the new via a re-edit meets remix. Sun Country felt the perfect platform to request 40 Thieves to show their understated, understanding of electro funk. Known for a series of disco dub releases for the likes of Leng, Permanent Vacation and Public Release, here Corey Black and Layne Fox representing, bring the bass, echo and fun to their Discomix, building, stretching, flipping and dubbing for a nigh on 10-minute electro-dub megamix.
