BSTC "Finally Shine Chicago"

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(Taken from OKAYPLAYER)
In the late 1970's, disco and electronic music did not go hand in hand, at least not completely. It is true that disco bands did incorporate a few synthesizers and electronic drums for effect (think Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here Anymore"), but when you thought of disco, it was The Trammps and the Bee Gees. When you thought electronic music, you thought Kraftwerk and Jean Michel-Jarre. Electronic music was still the weird, fringe music you had to seek: disco was the good music a lot of people loved to hate. Over the years, as advances in recording technology began to change, so did the way the music was played, recorded, and produced. Dance music became its own genre, leading to thousands of sub-genres, and it would become more electronic in the last two decades of the 21st century. Turn on the radio, and it's everywhere, and people on internet bulletin boards will cry about the need to bring back real instrumentation. This is where BSTC come in.

Music For A Saturday Evening is, as their bio indicates, "contemporary soul & new disco at its finest," but what does that mean? To me, what I hear on this album is a true band, a genuine band with real musicians playing real instruments, singers using their real voices without fixing a thing. To some that might immediately bring to mind "retro," but their style of contemporary soul and new disco involves bringing in a wider range of influences that weren't thought about 30 years ago. There had always been Latin influences in disco from day one, but on this album you'll hear more through the horn section, or the incorporation of Brazilian percussive sounds that taps into the source a bit closer.

The group do use samples every now and then, specifically in some of the drum loops, but they're only used as accents. As for the vocals, Keanna Johnson has one of those voices that make you wish it wasn't possible for the evening to move to Sunday because you still feel the energy through her voice, you don't want to set time in your day to rest, and it's very encouraging to hear. It would be more encouraging if all of today's modern R&B singers heard her, because this is how it should be done in a proper fashion. Their cover of Fela Kuti's "Shuffering And Shmiling" is one of the album's many highlights, and I hope in a live setting they extend it to another ten minutes because the version on the album is way too short. While not as dominant, there is also a hip-hop element present in some of these tracks, never too far from the anticipated breakdown.

The one thing that I like about Music For A Saturday Evening is that it is true to its title, it sounds like a party or a night on the town. There's a sense of energy in this music that was briefly lost in time by the quiet storm, when everyone seemed to want to become smooth and pop. BSTC are a celebration of music, tapping into a feeling celebrated by everyone from Jazzanova and Mondo Grosso to Groove Collective to Brand New Heavies, in fact this would have been a perfect soundtrack to the acid jazz movement 17 years ago. In this case, the music is then- but very much now- and it's very much needed now and in the future.

- John Book