Nils Landgren / trombone & vocals
Magnum Coltrane Price / bass, vocals & additional keyboards
Jonas Wall / tenor saxophone & vocals
Andy Pfeiler / guitar & vocals
Petter Bergander / keyboards & vocals
Robert Ikiz / drums
Back in 1994 when Nils Landgren started up his Funk Unit, there were those who asked whether there was actually any need for Swedish funk. After seventeen years, ten albums and several hundreds of concerts, the question has basically answered itself: to find the most fired-up take on this music anywhere, a sound which is inextricably welded into soul, rhythm and blues and jazz, and in which all of the instruments – and the vocals too – have an irresistible rhythmic urgency about them, this is definitely the band to see and hear. And if one turns to the pioneers, godfathers and grandees of the funk world – Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, the musical prime movers behind James Brown, Ray Parker Jr., or Joe Sample from the Crusaders – then there’s no need to look any further: each and every one of them has played with the Funk Unit.
And the Funk Unit’s story is far from over. Not even this pandemic was going to hold back their eleventh album. "Originally we wanted to record at Palma Studios in Mallorca, but Corona put a stop to that," Nils Landgren explains. "Then we decided we’d record at "Redhorn District" in Bad Meinberg, but nothing was working in Germany either. So what should we do. Give up? The Funk Unit? No chance! I asked my friend Björn Yttling if we could go to his Ingrid Studio in Stockholm, and he said ‘No problem.’ A few days before the session, the Swedish authorities decided that no more than eight people could assemble indoors at once. So, with the six of us plus just one sound engineer, we managed to stay under the limit."
So it is the core members of the Funk Unit who are to be heard on this album. Together, they form a close-knit clan from the "Stockholm Underground". Apart from Landgren himself, there is Magnum Coltrane Price on bass – he has been a member of the band right from the beginning, and also has a producer credit here. The others, who h....... more