The Budos Band: The Budos Band III [DAPTONE]

Why you'll love it

This Daptone pressing comes with a coupon for an MP3 download of the whole album. It's the record that gave The Bear "Black Venom" and a podcast its theme tune in "Unbroken, Unshaven."

This edition

• Download card included
• Stereo mix

About the album

Every so often a band arrives that sounds as if somebody hired them to score a spy film nobody has made yet. The Budos Band grew out of a jam session at The Five Spot in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, hosted by Antibalas' Martín Perna, and the Staten Island crew has been a Daptone fixture from the very start.

III is where the horns, organ and congas get properly menacing. "Rite Of The Ancients" opens like a ceremony, "River Serpentine" slinks, and "Nature's Wrath" and "Crimson Skies" lean into the dark, Ethiopian-tinged groove that AllMusic summed up as "doom rock Afro-soul." In the same stretch, members of the band backed Daptone labelmates, including Charles Bradley on his much-loved take of "Changes."

The songs have since wandered into television, games and the odd tequila advert, which tells you how well they set a scene. Put it on while making dinner and even boiling pasta starts to feel like a heist.

Also at Kops: more The Budos Band on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Daptone (cat# DAP-020), a reissue of the 2010 album.