Breakestra

LIVE MIXTAPE PART TWO

(Stones Throw)

Crate digging -- digging through dusty, forgotten record bins for tasty funk and soul nuggets -- has blossomed into a full-blown subculture on the West Coast, where it's mingled and merged with hip-hop as it has nowhere else on the continent. The People Under the Stairs count off their favorite jazz labels; Quasimoto rhymes about record hunting; Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow perform live shows with unknown 45s.

And now Breakestra, a nine-piece Los Angeles-based group of "cultural preservationists," release an album that reduces classic funk and soul tracks to their bare funktionalist essence. Stringing together 29 cuts in 50 minutes, the band blaze through tracks by funk acts famous (Sly Stone, James Brown) and less so (Galt MacDermot, Eddie Bo), re-creating the raw drum breaks, fuzzy bass lines, and tart horn lines that became the base of songs by A Tribe Called Quest, Boogie Down Productions, and Busta Rhymes. Like the Roots, Breakestra practice a sort of retro-revisionism, imitating what used to be the work of one DJ: looping, cutting, and pasting together the choicest elements of a record into a high-stepping set for restless groove fiends. Awkward in concept, but irresistible in practice.

-- Michael Endelman