Please note this is an old page and Fly Global Music has now moved. Please follow this link and search for the entry in the new site.

After touring with Justin Timberlake earlier in the year and supporting (or perhaps that should read “saving”) the Sly & The Family Stone summer appearances, Unklejam (aka Tyson Speede, Adonistar and Bobby Joel Stearns) have a live reputation that they have managed to transfer to the studio.

Previous singles ‘Love Ya’ and ‘What Am I Fighting For?’ stand out as their tributes to Sly, Prince, Outkast, George Clinton, Parliament et al. Commercial? I’d say and ‘Luving U’ is as appealing to a Gnarls Barkley fan as a disco-loving 80s radio station playlist compiler.

With the never-ending retro trendiness of 60s soul, 70s funk, 80s electro and 90s rave it’s hard to know where to stop. Unklejam don’t know either as they cram it all in and then cram some more. ‘Just Like Me’ and ‘Cry’ would have been huge pirate radio plays a couple of decades ago and I don’t see why they shouldn’t be big in the download era. ‘Cry’ is a particularly soulful downtempo track with ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ getting into Isley Brother’s teritory.

‘Go’ gets on the d’n’b tip via some bhangra synth. Even sounds a bit ‘Boy Band’ to me which makes it my least favourite of the album (try Miss Platnum ‘Give Me The Food’ as a Balkan alternative). And the next single, ‘Stereo’, that’s coming out “digitally and physically on 22nd October” is unfortunately lame compared to the best tracks while ‘Hello’ is thier stab at a certain 70s pop icon in much the same way as Ms. Goldfrapp apes Marc Bolan.

For a band who took their name from Funkadelic’s album ‘Uncle Jam Wants You.. To Save Dance Music From The Blahs, the mothership demands electro-soul (their term) more like ‘The Touch’.

It would be unfair to put Unklejam head to head against Sa-Ra, as Shafiq Husayn says, “you can only be the best you”. While you can’t do much about your inherited genes, Unklejam are plundering the best of the musical gene pool and more often than not on this album, they have done good. I just hope they survive the hype.

Hectic Mix nominations: ‘Love Ya’, ‘What Am I Fighting For?’, ‘Just Like Me’, ‘Cry’, ‘The Touch’, ‘Daddy Genes’

Reviewed: Unklejam — Unklejam (Virgin Records) Cat. No. CDVD 3034 Release date: 29th October 2007
Tracklisting:
1 Love Ya (3:40)
2 What Am I Fighting For? (3:28)
3 Luving U (3:44)
4 Just Like Me (4:11)
5 Cry (4:20)
6 Go (3:07)
7 Stereo (3:33)
8 The Touch (4:41)
9 Hello (3:29)
10 Don’t Pass Me By (3:45)
11 Daddy Genes (3:54)

Links:
www.unklejam.com
listen to Unklejam on last.fm
www.myspace.com/funkadelicparliament
www.vmg.co.uk