Cymande: "Cymande"

Wooo!  Startin’ off with some fire!  When I came across an original copy of this very rare first outing by the group, I snapped it up with an elated quickness.  A friend of mine had hipped me to Cymande some years back, with the first track I heard by them being “Brothers On The Slide.”  The songs on this album, however, aren’t quite into the full-on percussion funk sound of “Brothers”; rather, this is much more of a head music session, encompassing dubbed-out reggae, early, raw funk, Rasta folk, and a biting political bent that gets the righteousness up in ya all tingly.  The centerpiece here is the sprawling, moody “Dove,” akin to early Funkadelic in its acid-headedness, yet mellower and jazzier at the same time.  The album also includes legendary DJ favorites like “The Message” and “Bra,” and the entire song cycle manages to achieve a cohesive, fluid quality that one seldom finds in any genre of music.  Dig in, fly on and funk out.