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That was back in the Winter 2004 edition and since then, they haven’t really delivered. They cancelled an appearance at Gilles Peterson’s Montreux Jazz Festival Day last year. Reading between Mr. Peterson’s blog lines, he was disappointed more as it was at very short notice. Undeterred, he booked Sa-Ra again this year — only for them to do the same thing! Not good form and it’s a shame they seem to have lost much of the goodwill since they came to prominence with a host of remixes after producing Pharoahe Monch on ‘Agent Orange’.

At that time everyone was clamouring for their attention and their purple patch included remixes of ‘Midnight Birds’ (Medeski, Martin & Wood), ‘Heidi Brühl’ (Tosca), ‘Equipoise’ (Dwight Trible), ‘Too Cold’ (Roots Manuva), Carlos Niño’s ‘Spaceways’ theme tune.

However, the bubble burst and the trio of Om’Mas Keith, Shafiq Husayn, and Taz Arnold went off the radar. In the meantime, dirty mouth porno has become even more common in hip hop funk such as New Flesh, Spank Rock, Aaron LaCrate and David Banner.

So have they blown it? Signing to Kanye West’s ‘Good Music’ label will mean they are bound to get the exposure but, when you know Doug Carn lived in Keith’s house and his Dad played with Sun Ra; Taz’s Dad was married to P.P. Arnold (she of ‘The First Cut Is The Deepest’) and, when he was a kid, there were house visits from George Harrison and Parliament! With such a heritage, you know they weren’t going to just drift away.

Of late, they’ve come back strong with the Radiohead cover ‘In Limbo’ and a remix of George Russell’s ‘A Helluva Town’ (on Impulse - Jazz Reworked). With this imminent return to form, I was eager to hear some tracks coming out on their forthcoming album and I’m warming to them (again). Even with the sartorial fashion style of chav meets De La Soul in the tardis (the scarfs?), ‘Star Warz’, ‘Nasty You’, ‘Big Fame’ and ‘Hollywood’ are the big funk missing from the summer.

They’ve definitely got harder since their hit ‘Glorious’/’Rosebuds’ but it’s the type of non-conformity that Hectic stands up for; think Prince for the naughties. Don’t believe the hype that Sa-Ra are over-hyped just yet as ‘Nasty You’ could see an early come back to the sexy-funk charts.

They won the Gilles Peterson Worldwide John Peel ‘Play More Jazz’ Award for 2004 and the come-back starts here. Don’t forget SA to the RA, four letters separated by a hyphen. Sa-Ra, they’re creative funkers all right with a profanity warning, big fame and Hollywood all due to hit their star warz. This is going to be a big album.

Reviewed - Sa-Ra - Album Sampler (Good Music/RCA) Release date: 2006

Links:
Straight No Chaser: www.straightnochaser.co.uk : Sa-Ra Creative Partners (Winter 2004)
www.sa-ra.net
Spaceways Radio on KPFK 90.7 FM In Los Angeles on www.kpfk.org.
http://www.myspace.com/gillespeterson
Saturday, July 08, 2006 “Montreux line up change Sa-Ra just cancelled their date for me at Montreux! 1 week before the show - thanks for the warning guys! The funny thing is that they cancelled last year as well! Q-Tip did it the year before too - fortunately that year I managed to get Mos Def to step in - a memorable year in the end when he performed with Mad Lib and Jay Dee. Anyway I’m pretty sick of the amount of effort put into presenting moderately known US bands and then for them to go and blow out at the last minute - its not exactly as if the tickets are flying out because of them - its not like they’re The Roots or Outkast - know what I mean - I blame it on the labels who don’t give a flying fuck about what’s going on outside of the MTV adds list - bullshit!”