Pianist Brian Culbertson has claimed to be making funk for years. Now a grand piano is not an instrument directly associated with this primordial sound. The sound is too neat and clean to function functionally in function. Funk is supposed to sound raw and dirty and a grand piano misses that. Moreover, Culbertson clings too hard to the subject matter taught to him at the conservatory. It all sounds
… too neat and tidy. Fat grooves are destroyed by obligatory harmony changes and gooey breaks. Still, he can, because with opener Feelin 'It, with a vocal guest role from Chuck Brown, the godfather of go go, the splashes fly off. Culbertson quotes extensively from Bustin 'Loose, the big hit that Brown had with his Soulsearchers in the 1980s. The jazzy Stay With It also swings like the proverbial nits. For the rest, XII mainly contains matte and forced fusion according to the eighties pattern, and artificial r & b. (AD)more
