El Michels Affair: Yeti Season Vinyl LP

Why you'll love it

Leon Michels' cinematic soul project reaches east here, mixing Turkish pop, fuzzed-out prog and vintage Bollywood soundtrack moves. Singer Piya Malik joins on three tracks in Hindi, including "Unathi" and "Dhuaan."

About the album

Leon Michels has spent his career in the engine rooms of other people's records. He toured with Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings as a teenager, co-founded Truth & Soul and then Big Crown Records, helped start Menahan Street Band, and has produced for Norah Jones, Clairo and Kali Uchis. El Michels Affair is where he gets to play director, and he calls the sound cinematic soul.

After the Wu-Tang tributes of Enter The 37th Chamber and Return To The 37th Chamber, Yeti Season heads somewhere new. "Unathi" is a triumphant Turkish psych-pop jam, "Dhuaan" is big-band fuzz with a vintage Bollywood feel, and "Fazed Out" uses qanun strings, phased drums and canned horns for something like a psychedelic Western march. "Murkit Gem" and "Ala Vida" came out ahead of the album, and "Silver Lining" closes on warm, lo-fi hope, with home-cooked drums all over the place.

The whole thing has a friendly, optimistic streak, and Michels' mother even wrote a children's book based on it. It's the kind of record that makes a grey Tuesday feel like the opening credits of a much better week.

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