Search - Soul Mekanik :: Eighty One

Brothers Danny Spencer and Kelvin Andrews are house music legends. Danny produced his debut single in 1988 with his acid house classic ?Ride the Rhythm? under the name of This Ain?t Chicago. By 1990 he was on ?Top of The Pops? and the cover of ?Smash Hits? in his cult incarnation of Candy Flip with a cover of the Beatles? ?Strawberry Fields Forever?. Together, under the pseudonym of ?Sure is Pure?, in the early 90s, they remixed for artists such as Aretha Franklin, Sister Sledge, The Doobie Brothers, Lulu and Dave Stewart. They have also found worldwide chart success with Blueboy?s ?Remember me?, have written a critically acclaimed album ?No Illicit Dancing? as Sound 5, and co-wrote ?Rock DJ? with Robbie Williams, for which they received an Ivor Novello nomination. 15 years on, Danny and Kelvin started afresh as Soul Mekanik. They have just completed their debut album, the "breathtakingly brilliant" (iDJ) ?Eighty One?. "We just arrived at this concept", explains Danny. "We thought wouldn?t it be good if we could go back to 1981 armed with the technology from now, and then place it in that context." "Everything was in the melting pot then," suggests Kelvin. "Punk, disco, early electro and hip hop: it felt like music was progressing, there was an energy." The idea was no more than the album?s skeleton, a structure on which to build. And boy does it work. Located somewhere between the expressive pop of Mylo, the edge of Black Strobe, the production savvy of Richard X, the then and nowness of Tom Tom Club and the sheer accessibility of Royksopp, ?81? is charming leftfield house at its very best.