EXCLUSIVEListen toBurning house's debut album

Music

Next week – September 23rd – Burning House AKA beat-maker extraordinaire Chief Xcel (from seminal hip hoppers Blackalicious) and keyboard / vocalist Herv Salters (aka General Elektriks) release their debut album Walking Into A Burning House on French imprint Nave records… And you can listen to an exclusive stream right here on the good ship R$N!

Created across Paris, Berlin and San Francisco, Burning House’s first album is a radical and unprecedented collage of hip hop, funk, vocoders, squelchy vintage synths, disco-boogie and jazz. They are joined by fellow backing vocalists and instrumentalists on a selection of tracks, with lead vocal duties handled by Salters.

One of the founding members of heralded San Francisco Bay Area Hip-Hop collective Quannum Projects (Blackalicious, DJ Shadow, Latyrx ), Xcel met Salters when the latter moved from his native Paris to San Fran in the early 2000s.

Quickly realising that they both shared a common love for all things funky and irreverent (with both agreeing that when it comes to music, anything goes), The Chief would go on to invite Herv and his vintage keys onto numerous tracks and projects, while Salters invited Xcel to guest on his first album as General Elektriks.

The Frenchman then joined Blackalicious live on keys in 2005 to tour their The Craft album. The seeds for what would become Burning House were planted around that time. Things blossomed when Xcel joined Salters for a week in Paris, where much of the writing and producing groundwork was laid down. They reconvened a few months later, this time in Berlin where Herv was residing, and finished the album. They werent quite done with the country hopping though, and decided to head back to San Francisco to mix the record.

The distinctly superfly Turn Off The Robot is a mutant funk Frankenstein constructed from the various severed limbs of Zapp and Roger, Funkadelic, Dan The Automator and Daft Punk. Switching gears effortlessly between dance-floor scorcher Post Party Stress Disorder, Boom Bap hard-hitter The Nightbird and future jazz ballad Frozen Conversations, Xcels beats and Salters keys whip up a completely personal take on what the two believe modern music can be: a place over which creativity, freedom and fun reign.

Listen to the stream of the album in full exclusively here…