Moon People (ESL Music, 2012)
Admit it, every once in a while you need some ferocious tunes. You need to walk down the street, sit in the steamy confines of your car at lunchtime or breeze down the interstate bobbing your head, tapping your toe or shaking some other body parts as freakishly good music pours over you. Maybe all you need is some music to kick start that summer party. You need it. You want it. Well, you got it because Nickodemus has a whole new collection of mercilessly cool global grooves on his latest Moon People.
Earning his chops at New York’s Giant Step & Organic Groove as a DJ and then later starting Turntables on the Hudson with Mariano & Nappy, Nicodemus works steady in the city’s Cielo. His previous recordings include Endangered Species and Sun People. And, if that weren’t enough he is currently working on A Global Minute which incorporates MC’s from ten different cities and videos and paintings by Justin Carty.
Against thickly worked backdrop of dance rhythms, Moon People fashions a sound out of wildly expressive global influences ranging from Africa to Latin America to rap and even some Eastern Europe.
Nicodemus kicks off Moon People with the lusciously worked “Under the Volcano,” featuring Navegante. The global dance grooves deepen with the kick ass title track “Moon People” featuring the Real Live Show. Moon People just gets better with tracks like “Nights of Balaur,” “Alkebulan” Afrika Bambaataa, “Peaceful Island Life” with Kathrin deBoer and “The Nuyorican Express” with The Candela Allstars featuring Richie Flores on congas, Georgie Cruz on saxophone, javiera Rivera on trumpet, Ernesto Valdes on piano and Brian J on bass.
“Conmigo” featureing Sammy Ayala and Jose Marquez’s remix of “Under the Volcano” are just as richly rewarding. Moon People also sports Kissey Asplund on “Mirage,” “Alruccabah” and sassy “Los Tarantos” with Muchacho on guitar, Amon on congas, Troy Simms on saxophone and Omar Little on trumpet.
I don’t know if Moon People will cure what ails you but Moon People goes a long way to soothe that nagging groove need.
Listen to samples and Moon People and buy the CD or MP3s in North America.
Buy the album in Europe.
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
