If you like Quantic, you’ll love A Way In by Mitchum Yacoub.
Mitchum Yacoub plays bass, drums, guitars, keys, congas and percussion as well as producing, engineering and mixing the record, and yet it doesn’t sound remotely like a solo project. Instead, A Way In sounds like the richest and most naturally assembled live band you’ve heard in years, playing music that belongs to no single country and to all of them simultaneously.
Multicultural funk of the highest order that’s an absolute joy from the first note to the last, with a genre list that includes cumbia, salsa, afrobeat, jazz, soul and more. The musical sensibility of the record moves across Latin America, West Africa, the Arab world and the American soul tradition with complete fluency, seeing no divisions between these cultures and playing with them as if they were always one continuous tradition of rhythm and feeling.
The record opens with Mr. Terrestrial beginning with cumbia percussion and introducing the elements one by one, with a groovy bassline, a hypnotic keyboard, and a fantastic deep, rich saxophone. An instrument that can be schmaltzy and misused is here deployed with earthy, warm richness and melodic authority, and the saxophone carries as central a role throughout the album as the two vocal collaborators. 89 follows as another instrumental led by the sax that’s smoother with gorgeous percussion and rich emotion, feeling like nighttime in a warm climate with a live band in front of you inviting you to dance.
The music would flow naturally in any DJ set, sitting at the intersection of breakbeat-driven funk and organic world music and feeling both modern and timeless.
Hurtin’ featuring Divina is the first vocal cut and it’s a beautiful one. A reggae construction with distinctly Arabic melodies, the instrumentation draws from around the world while the vocal sits in a more mainstream R&B tradition. The combination of wildly eclectic music underneath accessible, warm vocal performances is a great strength, feeling inviting as Lourdes Iri sings in Spanish on Profecía, and weaves another cultural thread into the tapestry. Sala is built on intricately played guitar lines that recall Quantic in their intimate, close-picked quality sounding like the best holiday you ever had condensed into five groovy minutes.
The second Divina cut When I’m With You is deeply rooted in R&B, leaving generous space for the vocal before the wonderful Latin horns enter. Away is dreamy and stunning, sounding like Bonobo and Deseo Celestial has a stomping horn line that’s all in the hips before Gold closes the album on a glistening downbeat note that’s a perfect ending. More than half of the album is instrumental and the horns are given room to meander through solos that are given the space to be individual and expressive.
This is an album that should be familiar to everyone because it draws on traditions that are familiar to so many people. There’s nothing that’s deliberately difficult or jarring, carrying you through the record so smoothly that it’s over before you realise it. You’ll feel sunnier for listening to it, and the range within that warmth is worth noting. Whilst When I’m With You is candlelit and deeply romantic, Deseo Celestial sounds like big carnival festival music, and the leap between those two moods is achieved with the same core instrumentation.
Music that’s built on the universal language of dance first and foremost, you don’t need to know anything about Mitchum Yacoub or his cultural references, or even be a fan of any particular genre to enjoy A Way In. If you were to put it on in a bar, you could watch crowds of people with no particular interest in world music or global funk start dancing instantly. There’s a deep respect for live performance running throughout with Yacoub creating a rich bed of rhythm mostly by himself and then inviting horn players to meander and solo, and expert vocalists the space to express themselves.