I’ve started listening to downtempo & nujazz music around 98/99 after slowing down from listening to d’n'b all the time, that was an interesting era with acts like K&D, Tosca, Beanfield, Minus 8, Rainer Trüby, and German labels like Mole and Compost getting increasingly visible and G-Stoned establishing the Vienna nujazz Scene. De-phazz was also one of the major players back then with their unforgettable Godsdog album on Mole Listening Pearls in 1999, taking from drum’n'bass, dub, 70’s lounge music, european jazz, and mixing Caribbean rhythms and fitting them into an easy listening pop package they were one of the essential chillout bands, that were on almost all Modern Jazz/Chillout compilations.

With a surge of hundreds of similar acts, De-Phazz lost the significance they had back in the day, but continued to give us exquisite albums like 2001’s Death by Chocolate. So rejoice now as they have a new album under their belt on Phazz-a-delic. 16 tracks of easy listening stuff with a plethora of influences once again, I find this album better than their 2002 effort Daily Lama. The first 8 or songs are totally remarkable here, but “Boogie Philosophy” with a groovy Boogie dancer and the radio friendly single “Hell Alright” with the ultracatchy chorus that goes “Wreck your guitar and scratch your records!” got me instantly hooked to “Days of Twang“. The audience is split in two on Last.FM about the quality of the whole product, and while there are some dismissible songs like in the second part of the album like “Rock’n'Roll Dude” and the banjo lead “What’s the use of?”, in general I think it’s a solid album worth listening throughout.

De-Phazz – Boogie Philosophy
De-Phazz – Hell Alright
De-Phazz – Something Special (from Death by Chocolate)
De-Phazz – The Mambo Craze (from Godsdog)
De-Phazz – Godsdog (from Godsdog)