The Way of All Flesh

Getting nowhere with Al Green, in 1973 singer Sylvia Robinson took “Pillow Talk,” a song she’d written for the R&B superstar, and recorded the tune herself. That 22 orgasms were supposedly counted on Donna Summer’s later “Love To Love You” don’t mean jack after a session with Robinson’s elegant erotica, which even today could teach females a thing or two about makin’ a man rock-hard, even if he’s gay. Sadly, foreplay and seduction as a central theme in music eventually fell out of fashion; nowadays, it takes way too much imagination to bother with stuff so subtle and complex. That is, until branding and lifestyle became a means to an end for club culture and dance music. Enter Naked Music Recordings.

While Brit superclub labels like Ministry of Sound and Cream package and sell wild ’n’ crazy lifestyles of DJ-worshippin’ Anglo keds X’ing to the beat, Jay Denes and his Naked partners Dave Booneshoft, Bruno Ybarra and Miguel Migs are comin’ off a whole ’notha tip. There’s no way in hell the Naked crew could not be straight-out disciples of the dimmed-light, pre-coitus grooves laid out on “Pillow Talk.” Which is why the Naked label, inanely slotted into the house-music category, really isn’t dance in the strictest sense. Instead, the music is more like a patented formula of mid- to up-tempo liquid soul/jazz moods soaked through ’n’ through with oxytocin (the hormone a woman secretes when sexually aroused, if you have to ask). Think Playboy music if Hugh Hefner had thought of it first.

Naked evolved after the release of ’98’s What’s on Your Mind (Om Records), produced by Denes and Booneshoft. A light-jazz ’n’ R&B affair that played up the almost forgotten virtues of stripped-down mellow soul, the album quickly became an essential among urban hipsters. It wasn’t long before Denes convinced Om’s back-then A&R man Bruno Ybarra to jump ship and join him and Booneshoft in establishing Naked Music. Since then, the label has earned the respect of other deep-house boutique labels for serious groove lovers that rose out of the ’90s, such as Pan Handle, Guidance, Francois K.’s Yellow, and the U.K.’s Glasgow Underground, Soma and Peng.

For the past three years, Naked has offered a delectable assortment of CDs, EPs and 12-inch-vinyl singles that are slippery-warm-in-love-juice symphonies concocted from the deepest of soul and the swankest nu-jazz house. After signing a distribution deal with Astralwerks, the label recently reissued five of its seven previously released albums, along with the unveiling of its newest creation, Nude Dimensions 3. But this long-awaited addition to the Naked family is a disappointment — well, its only real crime is that it isn’t seeped in the same baby-doll sexiness that Nude Dimensions volumes 1 and 2 shamelessly flaunt. A 16-track ä 38 shout-out to the party people, Dimensions 3 is more percussive and up-tempo than the rest of its Naked siblings combined, sashaying toward the dance floor rather than cocktails ’n’ dry-hump action on the sofa. The set’s most attractive quality is the generous mixing options it endows to the truly imaginative jock. A back-jacker like Soul Patrol’s “Keep It Country,” if caressed by Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” would incite hallelujahs. Or how ’bout a li’l Missy Elliott rockin’ hips big-ass style with Aqua-note’s “Nowhere?” Likewise, some love from a classic like Kraftwerk’s “Numbers” oughta send the Morgan Geist’s “Lullaby” through the roof.

Yet, mix mileage ’n’ all, these tracks just don’t yield the naive blue-light soul that bubbles forth from the label’s very first single, ’98’s “Breakin’ It Down.” Featuring Oakland-based singer Ledisi, the song serves as an excellent opener for Nude Dimensions Volume 1. But while Naked Music tags Bare Essentials Volume 1 as its unofficial “best of” album, there are those who’d beg to differ. After all, wasn’t it on Dimensions 1 that we were first introduced to the masterful production skills of Bay Area sound architect Miguel Migs, a.k.a. Petalpusher? And what about Catherine Russell? Cradled in the emotional bass rhythms of Blue Six’s “Music & Wine,” Russell’s rich, unadorned contralto brings long-absent luster and excitement back to the club-diva arena. While Nude Dimensions 1 and the Bare Essentials sets each boast two mixes by Jay Denes, a.k.a. Lovetronic’s classic “You Are Love,” the Afrotronic version on Dimensions 1 worked overtime spreading the gospel of Naked as one of the year 2000’s top deep-house anthems.

Mixed by Mauricio Aviles, Dimensions Volume 2 offers vocal jewels like “Always” with Lisa Shaw and Aquanote’s Zoe Ellis on Petalpusher’s “True Love” mix. Petalpusher also does a fine job with his reworking of MJ Cole’s “Sincere.” Other stompers include Astro Jaxx’s “Losing Control,” James Perri’s “The Power” (Atjazz mix), Cooly’s Hot Box “Could You Love Me?” and Solar House’s “Got 2 B U.”

There are a good many of these titles on Bare Essentials Volume 1 and this is where it all gets a bit repetitive; most of the tracks on the album are really reconfigured mixes, or the original versions of songs that have already been introduced as remixes on earlier compilations. Nonetheless, the record serves as a good Naked primer, and undeniably the best tester disc before droppin’ coin on the others. In fact, Bare Essentials does greater justice to some of these tracks than the three discs released before it. “Music & Wine” re-emerges even more beautiful, shrouded in the dark, melancholic soul of Attaboy’s vocal mix. Same with Denes’ much lighter “Conga Lounge” touch-up of the song, which billows in an airy tropical breeze. Denes also smoothes over the harder edges of “Breakin’ It Down” with his Jay’s Blue vocal cut. The disc’s most euphoric moments, however, live in the sheer elegance of “Pure”’s original edit, which makes a good argument that not every song needs a reworking. Petalpusher’s irrelevant take on the cut (Dimensions 2) easily drives that point home.