Ikebe Shakedown

One Liner: Funky instrumental jam outs with tons of horns

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, gonna go with funk, R&B, soul instrumentals
Home:  NYC

Poster Position: 17
Day: Saturday at 1:45
Both Weekends

Thoughts: Yeah, baby.  Groovy as hell, retro funk soul shit that should be immediately sampled by Ghostface for a new collaboration album.  This falls into the same type of thing as BadBadNotGood or, kinda, Khruangbin, where the band just gets into a funky soul groove and rolls with it for a couple of very danceable minutes.  And for real, raps over the top of this would slay more than half of the other stuff coming out right now.

Three albums, 2011's Ikebe Shakedown, 2014's Stone by Stone, and 2017's The Way Home.  I don't notice an appreciable difference in the sound on each one, but they are all solidly enjoyable.  Their most-listened-to track comes from that middle album, "Last Stand," with 299k streams.

That 70's style guitar wakawaka, and then the horns, the start is hot.  And for a video that looked like it was going to be a live version, that one has really solid sound.  Only a few tracks break the 200k streams plane, so people aren't flocking to jam this, but it is extremely good background for work music.  No lyrics but some funky elements, I dig it.

The band name is apparently based on a favorite Nigerian boogie record.  I looked for it to try to hear the original but can't hunt it down.  And the name is pronounced “ee-KAY-bay,” so that you can announce it properly to all your hip friends and sound like you know whats up.  Most of the band met at Bard College.  I so wish I had met with some dudes and formed a rad band in college.  Instead I just drank all the Schlitz Light I could afford and sat around on decrepit couches listening to other people play music.  Dammit.

The top track off of their most recent album is "Out of the Shadows," with 111k streams.

Starts out like one of those Beastie Boys instrumental tracks, then adds in some guitar sound like an old spaghetti western tune, then tosses in a little surf rock reverb.  If you don't like funky stuff, then go somewhere else, but this is highly enjoyable.

The problem for me is what are we doing at the show in the Fall?  Just kinda turtle head dancing with a white man overbite?  I have no clue how this will come off on a huge stage at a festival.  Willing to give it a shot, but just seems like it would be odd.  Still, gimme more of the funky junk and let's see what happens.