SOUL CLAP with JEFF BUTTON at Footwork (425 Adelaide West), Saturday (May 12), 10 pm. 416-913-3488. See listing.
Just a few seconds into my interview with Charles Levine and Eli Goldstein of Soul Clap, Levine (aka Cynce) offers an off-putting metaphor for the relationship between today’s dance-hit DJs and their live audiences.
“There’s this thing going on where the crowd is like mice in a lab experiment,” he says. “The DJ feeds them pellets, and they react. In this case, the pellets are big buildups and drops in your run-of-the-mill tech house sets.
“It’s sad that people freak out and cheer and then go back to what they were doing, which is usually texting, taking photographs or tweeting about the feeling they just had.”
The Boston DJ duo, on the other hand, take a funky, horizontally inclined approach to their craft, an orientation summed up in the title of their debut album, EFUNK (Phonica), or Everybody’s Freaky Under Nature’s Kingdom.
“It’s the way that we like to dance and encourage others to dance,” says Goldstein of the title. “It’s about liberation from dance-floor wackiness and robotic tendencies.”
Levine and Goldstein are DJs in a performative sense, mixing sound effects, a cappella and weird intros and outros into sets of raw soul, funk, disco, 90s hip-hop, R&B, house and breakbeats. They’ve released several 12-inches, a mix for the DJ Kicks series and a mixtape that chronicles their influences, but EFUNK was their first stab at pop songwriting.
Conceived as an “ideal listening experience,” its 13 tracks fit on a single vinyl record, the varied electro-funk tempos recalling Egyptian Lover and vintage Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The vocals are by breathy Janet Jacksonesque singer Franceska and All Saints’ Mel Blatt.
“It was cool to have a voice from a 90s pop group as well as someone who sounds like one of our favourite female vocalists,” says Goldstein, noting that Jackson strikes a balance they love. “[Her music] has a pop edge that’s great for listening to, but with an underground clubby element to it.
“Because this was our first album, we wanted to look back at our history and what’s made us who we are, and then add our own voice to that history.”
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