“Awe sookie sookie!” screamed Torii MacAdams
Every year seems to bring a long list of reissues– particularly around Record Store Day– many of which are completely inessential money grabs perpetrated by multinational corporations. Shout out to everyone who bought the Jay-Z & Linkin Park album on “special edition blue vinyl.” For fans of legitimate obscurities, Numero Group, Now-Again Records, and Light In The Attic are constantly reissuing the records you dream of finding in thrift store record sections, mom and pop shops, and dusty stacks of vinyl when travelling abroad. Numero’s upcoming reissue, from the wonderfully, cult-ily named Universal Togetherness Band, documents a five semester stretch by a group of Columbia College audio engineering majors. Though the full-length isn’t set to be released until about two weeks from this writing, Numero has released a single of sorts, “More Than Enough.”
“More Than Enough” is dance-punk. No, wait. “More Than Enough” is boogie. Or funk. It’s difficult to categorize a song that freely borrows elements from every popular black music form before 1983. The keys and jazz saxaphone are turquoise-tinted boogie, but the drums are ragged and barely contained; their looseness gives “More Than Enough” some real grit as it drives toward a nearly unhinged breakdown. Numero calls Universal Togetherness Band a “party band,” and there appears to be credence to that description– “More Than Enough” is, above all, a pliant party jam, its permutations never veering into too drugged or too sober undanceability. This is stained-carpet funk from a group of musicians too young to get up with the down stroke, but just old enough to have caught the tail end of the unfairly villainized disco era. Next time you’re tempted to plonk down $20 on some bullshit reissue, don’t. Buy the Universal Togetherness Band’s 12” instead.
