A couple months after "Summer," the track
Leon Michels co-produced for
the Carters'
Everything Is Love, was heard as a sample source on
Don Toliver's
Heaven or Hell, and only a week after
Chicano Batman issued their
Michels-produced
Invisible People,
Michels'
El Michels Affair returned with
Adult Themes. The first LP of original
El Michels Affair material since their 2005 debut, it's not a work of kitsch, as the title might imply, but a sharp -- if smoothly navigated -- turn away from the grime and menace kicked out on their 2009 and 2017
Wu-Tang Clan tributes. Dusty soul and funk are still felt, but it's as if the idioms have been filtered through the more elegant work of scholarly European and British composers of film and library music --
Francois de Roubaix,
Piero Piccioni, and
Alan Hawkshaw, for starters -- with a dash or two of prime
David Axelrod and
The Italian Job-era
Quincy Jones. Some sly trap-styled drums excepted, this is another time warp for the theater of the mind, and it's neatly tied together with recurring salient elements that prevent it from slipping into mere background fare. ~ Andy Kellman
