Haven’t written about an album for quite awhile, thought tonight would be good for a short ramble. I normally like to spend a lot of time writing about an album for these posts but I don’t have much free time since starting my job a few weeks ago. I will eventually write some more like I have in the past, but that won’t be for a bit anyway.
I figure Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express – Straight Ahead is a good one to write about since the record is only five tracks. That might sound short but as you can see from the Discogs page they are pretty long (and excellent!) jams. This is the type of album that I toss on the record player as I’m going to sleep, which is exactly what I have been doing almost every night this last week. The whole band is fantastic, but it’s ultimately Brian Auger’s smooth singing and fantastic keys (seriously, these keys are amazing) that give me that calming/relaxing listening experience. I hadn’t heard of this group before listening to Madlib’s Mind Fusion Volume 2 which I’d highly recommend finding if you can. I know by now it sounds like I get way too much of my music just from Madlib, but finding gems like this so often from his mixes is the reason why I’ll continue grabbing records from what he’s spinning.
Above you’ll find my two favorite songs from the album. Straight Ahead, the title track is the smoothest one on this in my opinion. The singing is nice, but when Auger gets into his groove on the keys this song gets seriously amazing. This is the one I keep playing over and over again, can’t get enough of it. The other track is Beginning Again which is the cut found on Mind Fusion and the reason why I had originally purchased the record (by the way, this one is super cheap! I think I paid around $5-6 shipped on eBay, def grab it if you see it). I think Madlib only plays the first couple minutes of the song, hadn’t realized until playing the whole thing how long of a jam this song is. Certainly happy about that fact, the congas and guitar really shine over Auger’s keys on this one.
That’s about all I have to say about this record. One other quick note, another reason why I would recommend grabbing this on wax is for the cover art, pretty sweet in my opinion. In the end I was actually surprised about how much I enjoyed the album, I’m definitely going to check out more of their work in the future.
Songs included above are Straight Ahead and Beginning Again.