september 20, 2022

I-Level - I-Level (LP) (1983) - €7,99

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I-Level were a British post-disco, R&B band, known for their underground UK club tracks "Minefield" and "Give Me" (also released as "Give Me What You Can't Get Back"). Under license to the US label Epic Records, the band had some chart success in the UK and US.

At the height of her pull, Essex group, I-Level, released a wonderfully romantic, uptempo electronic-R&B single called “Minefield” near after England’s ridiculous war with Argentina and promptly got banned from the radio. 
Trying to go for their third, hit single, with a slightly innocent tongue-in-cheek song, who knew that it could have jumpstarted the end to such a trailblazing crew. Before Loose Ends, The System, Soul II Soul, and the Soul Connection crew did their thing, there had to be some groups willing to stuck their necks out to advance a decidedly British-kind of modern soul music. I-Level’s self-titled debut is one of my favorites in doing so, not just for what it sounds like, but how it did it (as mercurial as their short career was).

I-Level’s self-titled debut is fascinating because it gives you an above ground view of the various styles younger Brits were trying to digest and fuse into R&B and to make it decidedly of their own kind. You name it, everything from dancehall, post-disco, electro, new wave, and post-punk were styles keyed in by this trio who seemed more in tune with the music heard on the back streets of England than on in America’s shores. Luckily, as Joe was the owner of his own small recording studio, I-Level were free to explore how to exactly do all this new fusion, far from the label’s hand.
What strikes me about I-Level’s debut is how melancholic it feels. It certainly tries to speak of the unease even casual dalliances must have been for youths back then. Never entirely “adult” I-Level has that in-between feeling of young lads and gals navigating through equal measures of partying, wilding, and loving. Updating “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” for the streets of Brixton, to return to the beginning, “Minefield” should have been a proper hit. Boogie binds take songs like “Treacle” into a half-motion mining proto-house ideas, I-Level was unknowingly stumbling too. It’s something you hear in the looseness in its downtempo arrangements — equal parts dub and knotty soul music, meeting nicely askew naivete.

The A-side ends on outstanding dubby uptempo soul that sounds like little else from its time. It’s what made Imagination’s own, other world so interesting…and what makes cut like “Stone Heart” and “Give Me” so special (notwithstanding their “boyish” screeds). America really wasn’t in tune to this, to their own fault. In the end, one can imagine Larry Heard whetting his fingers to get the U.S. Remix of the latter, it was UK House music before such a thing existed. Sam Jones’ leftfield acapella take on “Woman” even nails a bit of future R&B, in a way that’s both decidedly tender and decidedly affecting as soon as that sweeping arrangement fills in and Ray Carless from another pioneering UK jazz funk group, Incognito, swirls in with his pleading sax work. It was epic drama, in a pint-size space (at least for those trying to become “real men”).

As much as I-Level predicted the future of UK soul music, should have been hits never materialized and chart-friendly, leftfield dance cuts like the ones you’d find on the flip side — “No. 4”, “Teacher”, and “Music” — suffered from the lack of radio airplay and scant record sales. I-Level would come back two years later with Shake! But by then all the cats in this band, and Joe especially, had their hearts set on other ventures that’d turn out far more successful. However, for me, there’s just something so nostalgic, inviting, and refreshing about their debut. Must be the kind of heart worn on their sleeves. There are moments that just move you and others full of emotive pause, in a way that still sound fresh and timeless, in a way that warrants someone (finally) taking it out of its never-reissued ghetto.

Over the years "Give Me" has been sampled by Sandy Kerr on "Thug Rock" (1982); AZ featuring Nas on "Gimme Yours" on the 1995 album Doe or Die; Lost Boyz on "So Love" on their 1997 album, Love, Peace & Nappiness; and A Tribe Called Quest on "Give Me" (featuring Noreaga) on their 1998 album, The Love Movement.

In 1985, I-Level disbanded and worked on music projects with other musicians. All three band members continued their music careers as record producers.


Side A
A1.  Minefield - 6:57
A2.  Treacle - 3:23
A3.  Heart Aglow - 3:25
A4.  Stone Heart - 4:40
A5.  Woman - 3:34

Side B
B1.  Give Me - 5:45
B2.  No. 4 - 5:03
B3.  Teacher - 4:27
B4.  Music - 3:02
B5.  Face Again - 4:03


Companies, etc.

Credits

Notes
Release:  1983
Format:  LP
Genre:  Post-disco
Label:  Virgin Records
Catalog#  205 542

Vinyl:  VG+
Cover:  VG / kleine inkeeping linksonder

Prijs: €7,99

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