lockdown : vinyl find #6.

As I was driving accross New Zealand back in 2015, I made a stop in Christchurch, and witnessed how difficult it is for any city to recover from an earthquake, let alone three. Since then, the city has suffered from other calamities, unfortunately. 

I remember a damaged town, but with a wonderful light. And I spent a few hours browsing in a couple of record stores, as I did in other towns accross the country. Travelling by car surely helped, and the trunk slowly got filled with records. 

When it was time to leave the country, I was carrying the result of my hunt in a 15kg-heavy trash bag in my arms. At my arrival in Europe, my bags were nowhere in sight and all I had left were my recently acquired records.

I remember one of the stores had a sale, so I took advantage of it and snatched this album by The Stylistics, because I knew it was filled with classic hip-hop samples (think "You're a big girl now", "You are everything", "People Make the world go round" for example). I knew I would find pure soul music from the 1970's, with sweet vocals and well composed songs, most of them I would probably already know from compilations. I knew a friend of mine, Pi-Pol, had already sampled some of their songs in his beatmaking endeavours. 

When one mentions soul music, the obvious names Stax and Motown comes in mind. Even Atlantic sometimes. But very few think of Avco, although the label produced notorious soul stars Della Reese and Van McCoy, for instance.

For this album by The Stylistics, their first one, all praises go to the duo that shaped it : Linda Creed on lyrics, and Thom Bell on music. Impeccable melodies, landmark drums, even a flute solo, are some of the elements you'll find here. 

So, today, absolutely not a rare record, but an essential one. 

The Stylistics - The Sylistics. 

Here's the full album, as a Youtube playlist.