Isaac Hayes, who composed the original theme to ‘Shaft’, was a very funky man. Born into some not inconsiderable poverty, young Hayes worked his way through the industry to become a go-to man at Stax.
Many albums followed, not to mention his career re-ignition as the voice of Chef in the Canadian-built American baiting machine that is South Park. Were Hayes alive today, he would no doubt be digging it, jive talkin’ and the rest.
Luckily for him, Hayes died before he could encounter the agonising, phoned-in floppiness of Quasamodo. Despite Jalapeno Records insistence that he is a young master, and no stranger to the Funk, this track, and others in his canon, speak to a man devoid of delicacy or original thought. Pairing Fatboy Slim’s castoff beats with stock guitar and pseudo-theremin warbles is just plain lazy, and despite layer upon layer of dancey bits, the track refuses to swing the way it should.
Taken on their own, the individual parts feel mechanical, cynical almost; the drums in particular have no life in them whatsoever, and called to mind that crawling feeling when your mate plays you his rubbish band. Hoping that this was a one-off, I dove headlong into Mr. Nassios’ other tracks, hoping against hope that he’d laid his dog eggs in one basket. Sadly, I happened upon his mauling of ‘The Passenger’, which was expertly poor, and felt a pang of sympathy for Thaliah, the singer charged with trying to rescue it from the worst of all musical crimes-being bland.
Though I’m sure that Dimitri Nassios has composed some excellent material, but this isn’t it. What stuck with me after repeated listens, was that it isn’t enough of anything; too stilted to be danceable, too grooveless to be funk, to vacant to be ironic. Son Of Shaft is not worth listening to. Pointless.