Reup: Best of Cymande

Amazon review: Short-lived but legendary, Cymande is oft-compiled on funk assemblages, but this CD of their first two LPs is altogether necessary, even if the music moves away from tight beats into Rasta-folk toward the end. Cymande's reputation has grown considerably over the last twenty years. Featuring a multi-national crew with a strong Caribbean influence, the band produced a few hits in the early seventies, then disappeared. But the epochal "Brothers On the Side," and the ingeniously structured "Fug" contain a subtlety and tension lacking in all but the best bands of the era.

Funky 16 Corners: Their music was a sophisticated mixture of American soul and funk, African pop, Latin sounds, rock and all of the various and sundry intersections of those sounds. A close listen to their first LP is like a drive through Harlem in the early 70’s with your car windows down, letting snatches of Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Santana and a thousand lesser groups (woven securely into the fabric, but essentially lost to the ages) drift through the windows and into your ears. There are elements of early-70’s prog-cum-stoner rock guitar, hard drums, jazzy bass and horns as well as a bedrock of polyrhythmic percussion.

AMG bio


Cymande (1973)
320kbps, 180mb on megaupload
1. The Message
2. Brothers On The Slide
3. Dove
4. Bra
5. Fug
6. For Baby Woh
7. Rickshaw
8. Equitorial Forest
9. Listen
10. Getting It Back
11. Anthracite
12. Willy's Headache
13. Genevieve
14. Pon De Dungle
15. Rastafarian Folk Song
16. One More
17. Zion I

PS My bad, Willy's Headache in the archive is corrupted. Here's the good file: http://sharebee.com/4fb2fa67