180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL FEAT. JOHN ABERCROMBIE, STEVE GADD, ANTHONY JACKSON Known for housing a famous Beastie Boys sample, the reissue of the 1975 funk and fusion classic Funk Factory brings peerless Polish and American players together for a groovy, eccentric journey. It was an album cut from this LP that captured a particular corner of the music-geek imagination for more than 40 years: "Rien Ne Va Plus," from the self-titled 1975 album, had its reckoning with the canon when the Dust Brothers sampled major chunks of it for Beastie Boys' "Car Thief." "Rien Ne Va Plus" is a banger, all post-Head Hunters springy synth-bass. As for the rest of the album, Funk Factory can stray pretty far into the cheerier excesses of prog-jazz. It emphasizes the alluring strangeness of its more experimental moments, like the hallucinogenic haunted-house tour of "Lilliput" or the banshee James Brown vocal riffs on "Horsing Around." "Rien Ne Va Plus" remains the top highlight. This album is proof that a core of musicians schooled in jazz but culturally steeped in the folk and classical traditions of Eastern Europe could, at least once, put out something that fit well with the crossover sound of the times while being unafraid to dive into freeform weirdness.
