Lord Newborn & The Magic Skulls

Lord Newborn & The Magic Skulls

Ubiquity ****

What you get with Lord Newborn & The Magic Skulls is a meeting of three maverick minds. Long before they hooked up, there was probably already a ton of connections linking Shawn Lee, Money Mark and Tommy Guerrero together, but their collaboration on this delightfully widescreen, slightly mischevious and old-school funky banquet is something else entirely. Recorded last winter in Money Mark’s Los Angeles studio, you get a batch of beautifully fizzy instrumental breaks with enough soul and jazz to send you away humming. Naturally, you can see the fingerprints of all three in the mix – Guerrero’s sun-dappled grooves, Money Mark’s vintage keyboard shuffles and Lee’s casual shape-throwing from the drummer’s stool – yet these individual tones never quite take away from the overall poise and pace of the record. Pedigree dusty grooves from the other side of the tracks. www.myspace.com/ lordnewborn

Download tracks: Dime Bag Conspiracy, Disco Loco