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At the makeshift Man-Ray Studios in Akron, Ohio, where barrels of soap were rolled away to make room for recording, guitarist Wilbur Niles and his then-girlfriend keyboardist Machelle McNeal recorded Ja Ja.
It was titled after King Jaja of Opobo in Nigeria, who lived during the 19th century, rising from slavery to become a wildly successful broker of palm oil. Niles learned about Jaja as an undergrad majoring in history; humid and dreamy, it would lead off the pairs first and only album together, 1979s rawly-produced Thrust.
It begins with an elliptical little electric- piano hook by McNeal, an accomplished musician without much jazz experience, accompanied by wind sounds. The effect is of sparkles of sunlight through an otherwise dense sheet of fog. Thrust exists in that blurry, liminal space between jazz, funk, soul, and R&B; 70s-era CTI comes to mind, but the unpolished vibe sloughs off that comparison, too. Even when Summer Fun goes for a four-on-the-foor feeling, the mid-fdelity production renders it diaphanous. The more strident Punk Funk is a nod to Devo, whose road crew ran Man-Ray. (Theyre punk; Im the funk! Niles explained with a laugh, on the Sounds Visual Radio podcast.)
Tracklist
Ja Ja
Summer Fun
Punk Funk
Hypertension
Untitled
Quiet Isle
One Slave, One Gun