Thrust Into The Weekend

McNeal & Niles: Ja Ja and Punk Funk
From: Thrust [Tinkertoo, 1979]

So, after J.'s quickie yesterday I feel a bit guilty about holding back on my own textual diarrhoea, but, due to knowing squat about the artist involved I'm afraid I have no choice. Feel free to use up your allocated reading time with a game of solitaire, a call to someone you love or an extra long dump in your office toilets. You see? It's all love and giving at Ear Fuzz.

McNeal & Niles were a guitar playing husband and keyboard playing wife duo who (to my knowledge) released a single longplayer under their own names. Strangely out of sync with the disco sound of the time of it's release in 1979, its lush synthetic sound gives it more of a timeless feel.

Due to its across the board lack of success on original release the album has long been an eager digger's wet dream but with the recent reissue its class and quality can now be heard by those who don't have 600 dollars lying around and the right connections to get their sweaty paws on an original.

Ja Ja totally pulls all the right strings for me, featuring a simple keyboard melody that burrows deep inside and the kind of throbbing bass and stuttering meaty drums that I get tapped on the shoulder and asked to turn down when I'm rocking it on my Mp3 player. Understated and at the same time epic, I know I harp on about musical perfection in simplicity but, seriously, listen to this and tell me that it isn't absolutely sublime.

Punk Funk is the heaviest track on the record and kicks things off with a hard as nails drum solo - I wish I could give credit to whoever played drums on this album but there's very little info out there. Any knowledge dropped would be appreciated. Again making no errors throughout the piece this funks hard with it's wah wah guitar and distorted synths.

One of those albums I turn to whenever I need reminding that there's still so much great music to be discovered and unleashed, I can't recommend this highly enough.