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From The Desk Of The Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright: The James Hunter Six’s “Minute By Minute”

With iconic garage-punk trio the Oblivians, with the Parting Gifts (his collaboration with the Ettes’ Coco Hames and Jem Cohen), with a legion of other one-offs and defunct projects, and, for the past 13 years with driving rock ‘n’ soul revue the Reigning Sound, Greg Cartwright has chased various traces of American rock and pop to arrive at something singularly his. Still, with his legacy perfectly well cemented among garage-rock aficionados and discerning vinyl-heads, Cartwright is still chasing the unexpected. The Reigning Sound’s latest album, Shattered, is the band’s sixth proper full-length, a follow-up to 2009’s Love And Curses, and its debut for Merge. Cartwright will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on him.

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Cartwright: Like most musicians, I get introduced to new sounds and new bands in a live atmosphere. I spend a healthy amount of my year on the road, and that’s my window into what’s going on with other groups and songwriters. It’s really an anomaly when I fall in love with a record by a current artist without seeing them first. Sometimes a friend will hip me to a new record or I’ll hear something while reading on a music blog or website, but it’s not the norm. In the case of James Hunter, it was purely happenstance. I was at Daptone Studios in Brooklyn recording the new Reigning Sound record when house engineer Wayne Gordon and Mikey Post (our drummer & Daptone employee) played me some tracks from the forthcoming James Hunter album that was being prepped for mastering. Gabriel Roth of Daptone had produced the record out in his new California studio, and Daptone had licensed the album for American release. Right away, I was kind of dumbfounded. Every track was blowing me away. Every song sounded exactly the way you want an R&B song to sound. Direct, punchy and arranged perfectly with no unneeded overdubs or clutter. Nice and open, but tight. Add to all that the fact that James’ voice is one of the most emotive and stirring in the field of modern soul music. I hope that some time soon I’ll get to see them perform live, but until then the Minute By Minute album is holding me over pretty well. Check it out.

Video after the jump.