If you are into mid-Eighties Prince, Gap Band or their closest kin, Midnight Star, then the electro-funk of Dazz Band may be for you. Right out of the gate, super crisp drum machines and thick synth lines wreck dance-floor havoc on “To The Roof” and hardly let up for the next thirty some minutes.
Inclusion of the self-titled single “Joystick” is a no brainer, but it’s also a strange one, making full use of vocoder and sequencers that must have been pretty foreign to folks being blasted with it over the air across the country. While the album does have some old-school slow-jams attached (“Until You,” “Now That I Have You”), Dazz Band mostly encapsulates what was the future of funk and a whole lot of Motown right here.
Swoop, I’m Yours! – Wade
