Album Review: Conspiracy from Rich Willey's Boptism Funk Band

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Album:  Conspiracy
Artist:  Rich Willey's Boptism Funk Band
Label:  Wise Cat Records
Website: www.boptism.com/conspiracy

Big Band music with a tinge of R&B blended into the mixture, Rich Willey's Boptism Funk Band makes jolly good music on their new CD Conspiracy.  Track after track is layered in throbbing drumbeats, rotating guitar chords, and a variety of traipsing adventures paved by the medley of horns, which give the compositions multifaceted traits.

Bobby Floyd's moaning Hammond B3 organ drives squiggling lines across "Clip Clop Mogul," which alternate with the bevy of horns scrolling a cluster of wiggling motions in a random fashion.  The jazz funk flapping produced by the musicians elevate the listener to that jolly place where the band wants their audiene to be.  Keeping up the merriment is the bopping toots of the horns piping "Adrenaline Rush," fringed in a tooling of twizzling guitar riffs from Dave Stryker.

The sunny tone of the horns shower dollops of buoyant jaunts along "Blessed are the Hip" as Stryker's guitar strings ramble into a series of consonant verses.  The correspondence produced by the instruments projects the image of dancing in a free-style and cohesive frolick.  The funky grooves of "Brother Kenya's Paradigm" are tweaked by the roaming flaps of the saxophone and trumpet, creating a crowd of several voices all complementing one another and moving in the same direction.

The jolly jiggles created by Rich Willey's Boptism Funk Band bring many voices together along the sound passages, producing a cohesive amalgamation.  The old world of bop and Big Band meet new world free-style jazz and R&B/funk on the band's new CD.  The merging of old thread with new patterns of embroidery bodes well with Rich Willey's Boptism Funk Band.

Musicians:
Bobby Floyd - Hammond B3 Organ & Piano
Byron “Wookie” Landham - Drums
Dave Stryker - Guitar
Wally Minko - Fender Rhodes and Synthesizer
Rich Willey - Bass Trumpet & Trumpet
Mike Boone, - 5-String Electric Bass
Dan Fornero - Trumpet & Flugelhorn
John Swana - Valve Trombone & EVI
Tom Evans - Tenor Sax, Alto Sax, Clarinet, Flute, Baritone Sax
David Mann - Tenor Sax & Soprano Sax

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