NSIt started as a joke between friends. One night four years ago, R&B singer and drummer Anderson.Paak played backstage with Bruno Mars on his European tour. It must have started, because once the lockdown came, they “locked themselves together and made an album,” pop perfectionist Bruno Mars, from whom many still have to recover, declared on his Instagram profile.
Mars and Buck share a love of Afro-American music in decades past—that’s how Silk Sonic, as they call themselves together, sounds like the two halves they’ve always belonged together on their debut album An Evening with the Silk Sonic. A journey through time into a world of twinkling stars, light-colored suits, and pink sunglasses takes less than thirty minutes.
Get the disco ball
“An Evening With Silk Sonic” isn’t just a homage, it’s a revival of ’70s funk, soul, and R&B. New hip-hop elements: “Fly like me”, “777” and “Skate” make the disco ball go off and let Anderson.Paak establish himself as a drummer. In Nine Songs, you are struck by the joy that is in every harmony and every sudden change of chord. On “Apple Music,” Mars W. Paak is about browsing old magazines for the right drums or guitar tracks. This attention to detail, combined with the duo’s abundance of musical talent, makes this show a nod to the past.
Parliament-Funkadelic bassist Potsie Collins gave the name Silk Sonic and drew audiences through the album’s fantasy evening program with a velvety sound. Silk Sonic completely abandons the complex questions of identity from Paaks music, preferring instead to play in Bruno Mars’ music world, where one desires beautiful women (“After Last Night”), sings of Monte Carlo Coupé (“Fly as me”) Or left in the rain mourning the beloved afterwards (“smile”).
So that kitsch doesn’t confuse you, everything happens with a wink: Anderson. Buck sings “Not to be dramatic but I want to die” in “Smoking Out the Window” and throws himself on the beige carpet for extreme heartache in a music video. This is how Silk Sonic manages to create a cartoon that turns into a work of art – a prank between two friends that turns out to be pretty cool. On occasional live shows, the duo impresses not only with their velvet suits and little dance breaks, but also with new forms of their songs – as if Bruno Mars wanted to prove to the world that he really could sing every note. At the grand finale, we float above the stratosphere in “Blast Off” and end the show by dancing the rings of Saturn. Mars sings: “We’ll watch the world go crazy from outer space.” Who can blame him for his escape into space – there were worse moments to some musical escape.
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