Quarterly Critic’s Choice
The best and most interesting new releases of the previous three months are awarded a place on the Quarterly Critic’s Choice. Evaluation criteria are artistic quality, repertoire value, presentation, and sound quality. From 2014 onward, the Long Lists are stored directly with each Quarterly Critic’s Choice.
R&B, Soul and Hip-Hop
Kool & The Gang: People Just Wanna Have Fun
CD/2 LPs, Astana Music Inc. 0819376047928 (Membran)
Kool & The Gang is actually a jazz band with disco hits. Live, they show us in their rampant improvisation game where the journey could have gone after the time of The Jazziacs. But things turned out differently; the hits tumbled onto the dancefloors for decades, because »people just wanna have fun«. In 2024, the band’s employees will be recognised for their lifetime achievement of 60 years of service – and so the remaining gang members around Robert »Kool« Bell and George »Funky« Brown simply continue to celebrate the eternal party on what is now their 34th LP: with the means of today, but without selling out to the zeitgeist. For the jury: Torsten Fuchs