The Budos Band
Frontier’s Edge
Diamond West
The Budos Band are a fluctuating collective of musicians from the New York City area who play their own instrumental fusion of Soul, rock, afro-beat, and movie music. When they aren’t working on their own projects, members have been involved in many of the neo-soul projects at Daptone Records, including work with Sharon Jones, Charles Barkley, and Amy Winehouse.
Frontier’s Edge is a six-song EP that sounds like the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s lost space opera. The title track, “Frontier’s Edge,” sounds like Mulatu Astatke doing his Ethio jazz thing on a knock-off James Bond film. I can almost see the trailer with Richard Roundtree on a space station fighting off the interstellar Klan.
There is an inherent tension between the funky horns and the slick “let’s all go to the lobby” production elements. That tension gives the EP a retro-futurist feel that works well as a personal soundtrack, too.
