The cover and inside booklet of
Down to the Bone's second album shows a variety of rare-groove record stores (both inside and out), displaying racks of records by
Weather Report,
Lonnie Liston Smith and
Donald Byrd. The music itself is a delicious update of those same sounds -- yes, the grooves are tighter and have a bit of hip-hop bounce, but the soloing is far and away superior to most acid-jazz releases. Programmers and group frontmen
Stuart Wade and Chris Morgans have the irresistible knack of translating their influences into an instantly familiar yet radically different style of music, and the results are uniformly excellent. Original Blue Note recording artist
Reuben Wilson guests on Hammond organ for "Vinyl Junkie." ~ John Bush