Words by Nick Mee. @Nickjmee
When sifting through a raft of new tracks, a reviewer is grateful for the song that leaps from the pack and slaps him or her about the head for attention. And when I say slap, in this case I mean slap. For here is Swiss bassist Alissia, giving it more thumb action than a hitch-hiker on the North Circular. The Berkeley-trained musician’s new single, ‘Take Off’, is 200 seconds of unadulterated feel-good P-funk that sounds as if Prince and George Clinton are locked in a musical duel to prove who’s most worthy of wearing the high-waisted cerise trousers. This results in some cheesy tropes, naturally, such as gossamer synth layers and funktional lyrics, but the horn blasts and interstellar solos are huge fun, and driving it all is the warm and edgy grind of Alissa’s on-point bass-playing, perhaps the one element of the whole-thing that’s relatively restrained. She knows no peacocking is required when laying down a groove this molten.
Alissia's new EP, 'Back To The Funkture', is out on 29 January