"Funk is my Religion" is the band’s eleventh album – the album title just says it all. Landgren and his Norsemen bring a passion, an intensity and a freshness to their craft which has remained undimmed since the start. For more than 25 years, jazz-funk has been the force driving Landgren. This veritable elixir of life produces the bubbling energy, groove and joy that can be heard and felt in every note of the music. The band’s deliciously easy and laid-back vibe gets straight through to audiences. With the crispness of their funk rhythms, blazing brass, cool vocals and persuasive melodies, a new chapter for the Nils Landgren Funk Unit is only just beginning.
Back in 1994 when Nils Landgren started up his Funk Unit, there were those who asked whether there was actually any need for Swedish funk. After seventeen years, ten albums and several hundreds of concerts, the question has basically answered itself: to find the most fired-up take on this music anywhere, a sound which is inextricably welded into soul, rhythm and blues and jazz, and in which all of the instruments – and the vocals too – have an irresistible rhythmic urgency about them, this is definitely the band to see and hear. And if one turns to the pioneers, godfathers and grandees of the funk world – Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, the musical prime movers behind James Brown, Ray Parker Jr., or Joe Sample from the Crusaders – then there’s no need to look any further: each and every one of them has played with the Funk Unit.And the F...
line upNils Landgren / trombone & vocals
Magnum Coltrane Price / bass, vocals & additional keyboards
Jonas Wall / tenor saxophone & vocals
Andy Pfeiler / guitar & vocals
Petter Bergander / keyboards & vocals
Robert Ikiz / drums
Recorded by Gustav Lindelöw at Ingrid Studios Stockholm, November 3 - 7, 2020
Additional recordings at Retrotech Studio, Tudeludan 3, Daion Studio, Skyclose Studio and Brottby Recording
Rhythm arrangements by Funk Unit
Horn arrangements by Jonas Wall
Produced and mixed by Magnum Coltrane Price at Retrotech Studio
Mastered by Hoffe Stannow at Cosmos Mastering
Cover art inspired by Andy Warhol (detail)
