STACK #124 Feb 2016

established artists. Ronson and album co-producer Jeff Bhasker wanted the kind of unfettered, stirring gospel- influenced sound, untouched by the baggage of stripper pop or auto-tune. Accordingly, the pair set out across the USA on a roadtrip of discovery, looking for the singer to match the sound in their heads. They took in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in Louisiana, traversed Tennessee, Arkanas and Illinois. But it was in Jackson, Mississippi, that they came across the young Keyone Starr singing in a gospel choir. Immediately, they knew they’d found the sound; Starr was

Hey naysayers, this is actually pretty damn tasty. A super funkdadelic bass line straight out of Bootsy Collins’ suitcase struts along your street, while ‘our boy’ Kevin Parker gives the Tame Impala space rock treatment; sky-high vocals and a sleazy guitar break that will have Prince breaking out in a sweat.

Here’s the weird dub groove and Stevie Wonder again, but this time the musical Talking Book is singing his heart out as the electro atmos swirls up and away.

singing on three songs (and backing vocals on three others). He’s also contributed drums, guitars and synth. Wonder’s unmistakable contribution appears on the album opener Uptown’s First Finale , and it’s typical one minute, 38 seconds of Ronson ‘why can’t I do it all?’ perfection. It creeps up on us, all smoky atmospheric dub touches, before Wonder’s signature harmonica cuts through the ether; and a vocal not out of place on Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls announces proceedings in no uncertain terms. Of course, the album has been prefaced by the summer sailing single Uptown Funk . While the presence of co-writer Bruno Mars on vocals got it green lights the world over for commercial radio airplay, even the most hard- nosed, puritanical music fans couldn’t resist its infectious refrain and summer-fun groove (not that you’ll get any of them to admit that). But not at all album guests were famous,

spirited away to Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, and three of her vocal tracks are on the album. While the breadth of Ronson’s musical outlook is vividly expressed via the tricky cuts and corners of Uptown Special , something that’s simply compulsory viewing for all music fans – Ronson admirers or not – is his 2014 TED talk/performance on the nature of sampling, and its transformative influence on music. Ronson remixed 15 previous TED talks as an audio visual collage, and mounted his argument that sonically recycling music “shouldn’t sound like ‘hijacking nostalgia’ but should always bring something new into the equation.” With Uptown Special , he backs himself –and the argument. So, hear it.

New York, circa 2001? Ha! First London in about 1972, as a big, fat, Bowie/ Bolan glam riff slides its wandering hands around your waist. It all gives way soon enough for a silky smooth yacht-rock inspired vocal turn from Keyone Starr. Infectious. A positively Beatle-esque dreamer (fuzzy guitars, floating, whimsical vocals) that leaves the pastoral past and hits the sneaker-freaker streets of Philly and Harlem halfway through. More proof that Ronson genuinely knows his music backwards and forwards – any age, any country, any era, any time, as long as there’s something soulful and heartfelt in a song, he’ll be playing around with it and making it his own.

Uptown Special is available now via Sony Music.

See Mark Ronson’s TED talk at TED.com

Uptown Special has a wealth of collaborators: Kevin Parker, Stevie Wonder, Bruno Mars, and Kanye West collaborator Jeff Bhasker. But these figures are all from the music world. Wearing his producer hat, Ronson didn’t pen lyrics, he procured a lyricist, and not just any lyricist. If you’re going to have someone write the words, it may as well be your favourite novelist. Michael Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author: he didn’t write words and ‘pop them under the door’, he worked directly with Ronson and various contributing vocalists in the studio. Chabon was introduced to Ronson by mutual friends Andrew Wyatt (of Miike Snow), and was flattered by a subsequent invitation to collaborate. “He must have inferred from reading my last book Telegraph Avenue that I was a music fan,” Chabon told the N.M.E in January. “I write about music and lyrics in the context of that novel. The initial affection he inspired in me grew over time: from the start we hit it off, and I thought ‘let’s give it a shot’.”

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