24 Carat Black - Gone Are The Promises of Yesterday

Year of Release:  2009

Label:  Numero

Genre:  Soul - Free Funk - Rare Groove

Music:  5

Sound:  5
Format Reviewed:  Vinyl
 
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There is a growing number of record labels out there and seem to be dedicated to digging up old long forgotten music, with Numero being one of the finest.

Numero Records is fast becoming one of my favourite record labels due to the zeal in which they go about their craft.  The amount of effort in which they go to is evident in the quality of the recordings, music, packaging but most of all, the amount of research they put into each and every release with seeming disregard to commercial success.

I couldn't ask for a better introduction to the label with 24 Carat Black - Gone...The Promises of Yesterday.   It's like a ghost of the 1970s come back to haunt with songs of tainted love. The tracks on this album were to form 24-Carat Black's sophomore effort following their debut, Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth, a record that expresses the struggle of the coloured minorities and the cold reality in which they faced.  Feel-good it is not.

Ken Shipley writes in the liner notes that this was "an intimate follow-up album that no one in the world wanted to hear", as the famous Stax record label was coming to an end.  However, the tracks featured on this album pointed to what would surely have been a classic album, albeit still years after it's release.  Sometime the world's just not ready.

24-Carat Black was the brainchild of Dale Warren a certified prodigy - a gifted musician (violin, cello, piano), composer, songwriter, production engineer and orchestra conductor.  He dared to imagine a world where classical merged seamlessly with R&B and the success is not only evident in this album, but in his other works such as the string arrangement in the classic 12 minute long "Walk on by" performed by Isaac Hayes

This album sounds like nothing else I have heard.   Dale's composition has certainly developed from 24 Carat Black's debut album and built upon the sound of the opening track comprising emotive rolling classical piano.  This doesn't feel like a hybrid of classical and soul but something Dale has forged himself in the pursuit of furthering his art, because you don't do things like this for commercial success.

The album opens with "The Best of the Good Love Gone" and it seems like everyone in the band knows it, even Dale.  Princess Hearn (great name) provides the silky, ethereal vocals that soar gracefully over a liquid bass line.  The bass driven groove of the first track carries over into the second, with a guitar faint as a lingering scent another's flesh on your skin.

The most upbeat the album gets is track 3 "I Don't Love You", which is more defiance and denial than any sense of joy.

By the end of the album, the final track - "I Begin to Weep" - comes to a hush of distant beats, tears and funk bass, I feel like I'd come to the end of a beautiful, melancholic journey. Which is amazing since this is not an actual album, but rather 6 sensuous lush tracks that were salvaged from over 20 - all credit to Numero.   I'm left longing for more and can't help wonder what gems were lost when the tapes crumbled to pieces.

Behind every genius' dream is a wake of destruction and broken bodies; Behind Dale Warren, lay more than half his band who left before the sessions were complete, a 16 year old pregnant wife, subsequent broken marriage, alcoholism and an untimely death. But the legacy of his music remains and has been lovingly researched and put together for this issue. Follow that dream I say.