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The opener, ‘7th Galaxy’ is in the Blaxploitation OST groove and he’s got previous in this area as you’ll recall Coffey produced the soundtrack to Black Belt Jones that starred Jim Kelly, he of the big ‘fro in Enter The Dragon.

Mayer Hawthorne is an ideal singer for Coffey’s Motown background with ‘All Your Goodies Are Gone’ being in the Raphael Saadiq nu-retro groove (brilliant show and session he did with Gilles Peterson last week).

Going a bit more psych-Temptations (Coffey’s credits include ‘Ball Of Confusion’ and ‘Cloud 9’!), on ‘I Bet You’ he’s joined by Mick Collins (Dirtbombs) and Rachel Nagy (Detroit Cobras) that contains two proper rock-out guitar solos that you just don’t hear these days.

More in the Blues Brothers soundtrack belter genre, Lisa Kekaula (The Bellrays) get all Shreek like with ‘Somebody’s Been Sleeping (In My Bed)’ and the one I was dreading is ‘Only Good For Conversation’ with the oft TV advertised Paolo Nutini, Coffey goes a bit ‘Smoke On The Water’ and Nutini goes a bit Paul Rogers; a bit short but surprisingly good.

All this singing is fine but as a solo artist, Coffey is best known for the breakbeat of ‘Scorpio’ (don’t forget to check out The Breaks: Original B-Boy Street Funk & Block Party Classics) and on a similar groove we’ve got the funky horns of ‘Miss Millie’ featuring Kings Go Forth. Never heard of Kings Go Forth before but they are cooler than most of your Acid Jazz family of funksters on this showing.

And as good as the vocal contributions are, it’s the instrumentals that make this album for me. ‘Plutonius’ is a wah-wah funky instrumental organ groover, ‘Knockabout’ on a 60s Fender flanger bongo trip with ‘la-la’ Mike Sammes, the aforementioned ‘7th Galaxy’ and ‘Space Traveller’ going slightly far out (well compared to his Funkdelica days).

For the best of both worlds, put ‘Don’t Knock My Love’ (featuring Fanny Franklin of Orgone) with ‘Don’t Knock My Love (Part 2)’. Part 2 is definitely akin to a Funkadelic jam with its pounding funk with the someone sitting on the echo button a bit to the left of Lee Perry that’s more funky house that funky houses could dream of, Adrian Sherwood up for the remix?

In this day and age, a full length ‘Don’t Knock My Love’ Parts 1 & 2 (sounds like a 60s 7” doesn’t it?) combined and extended could have been a ‘Bonus’ track but apart from that, there’s little to not like about this album. Get Dennis on Later Live…With Jools Holland now we say, this man is a legend and deserves to be heard just as must as youngsters like Raphael.

Strut have excelled themselves with this one so play that funky guitar white boy and lets hope his current US tour gets extended to Europe for the summer - brilliant!

Hectic Mix nominations: all good but Mayer does shine out closely followed by Mick Collins.

Reviewed: Dennis Coffey - Dennis Coffey STRUT) Cat. No. STRUT075CD/LP Catalogue No: STRUT075CD/LP Format: 1xCD / 2xLP / digital Release date: 25th April 2011
Tracklist
1 7th Galaxy (3:55)
2 Don’t Knock My Love featuring Fanny Franklin of Orgone (2:18)
3 All Your Goodies Are Gone featuring Mayer Hawthorne (3:42)
4 I Bet You featuring Mick Collins Of Dirtbombs & Rachel Nagy Of Detroit Cobras (5:28)
5 Miss Millie featuring Kings Go Forth (3:17)
6 Somebody’s Been Sleeping featuring Lisa Kekaula of The Bellrays (3:56)
7 Plutonius (2:11)
8 Knockabout (4:02)
9 Only Good For Conversation featuring Paolo Nutini (2:30)
10 Space Traveller (4:20)
11 Don’t Knock My Love (Part 2) (3:19)

Links:
www.denniscoffeysite.com
www.strut-records.com
www.myspace.com/fannyfranklin
thedirtbombs.net
www.myspace.com/kingsgoforth
paolonutini.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Kelly_(martial_artist) 12.04.11 BBC2 Later Live…With Jools Holland with Cee Lo Green, Glasvegas and Seun Anikulapo Kuti & Egypt 80 with tracks from From Africa With Fury: Rise.