El Michels Affair: 24 Hr Sports (translucent red vinyl) [BIG CROWN]

Why you'll love it

This edition puts Leon Michels' cinematic soul album on translucent red vinyl. Guests include Clairo on "Anticipate," Norah Jones on "Carry Me Away" and Florence Adooni on "Say Goodbye," and Far Out called it an expansive, endlessly cinematic soul album.

This edition

• Translucent red vinyl

About the album

Leon Michels has spent a career making other people sound great, from Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and Lee Fields to Norah Jones, Clairo and Kali Uchis, co-founding Big Crown Records along the way. For 24 Hr Sports, his El Michels Affair project took its look and feel from vintage sports magazines and advertising, the glossy pictures and the way people dressed, then built a record to match.

Michels plays a little of everything, with Homer Steinweiss, Nick Movshon, Dave Guy, Marco Benevento and others in the band, and Lady Wray among the background singers. Florence Adooni sings "Say Goodbye" in Frafra and English, Rogê joins on "Mágica," Shintaro Sakamoto on "Indifference," and "Take My Hand" folds a saxophone solo by the late Rahsaan Roland Kirk in with a gospel choir. Short pieces like "Drumline" and the two "24 Hr Sports Theme" cuts draw on '70s fusion and Brazilian records.

Black Thought, who made Glorious Game with Michels in 2023, put it simply: "For me, everything Leon does is soulful." It's also the one round-the-clock sports channel in the shop that nobody has ever fought over the remote for.

Also at Kops: more El Michels Affair on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Listen

On Big Crown Records, a reissue of the 2025 album.