UK funk maestros The New Mastersounds return from a year of intensive touring in the USA to deliver their sixth album, Plug & Play, featuring vocalist Dionne Charles. What you get: their trademark infectious energetic grooves, warm vintage production by guitarist Eddie Roberts, and successful forays into sub-genres like psychedelic afro-funk, CTI-era jazz-funk, souljazz and classic soul. Though the NMS wear their musical roots on their sleeve, this ain't no retro copycat band: each track sounds unmistakably like The New Mastersounds. And in Dionne Charles they have found a vocalist who can do justice to the phenomenal soulfulness of the music.
1. Hole In The Bag
2. I Mean It So
3. Thermal Bad
4. Looking For An Answer
5. Altitude
6. Kuna Matata
7. Chrysalis
8. Idris
9. All We Can Do
10. Beyond The Bleak Horizon
11. King Comforter