Electribe 101 - Electribal Soul (2022)

Electribe 101’s long lost 2nd album finally sees the light of day.

A question that often crops in in discussions is ‘what has been the best decade for music?’ This has long been a questions to spark fierce debate, but generally boils down to a decision between the 60s and the 70s, with the 80s sometimes making a guest appearance.

There are good reasons for this, with all three decades producing innovative, daring and downright incredible music, but personally I would throw my vote behind the 90s.

A the 90s is perhaps an overlooked decade, but it gave us the flowering of dance club culture, the shoegazing scene, Nirvana, Public Enemy’s eminence and the very best of both Glastonbury and Reading festivals.

There was, of course, also a high amount of dross around that has not stood up well to the passing of time. Watching the reruns of 90s Top of the Pops from highlights well the good the bad and the plain old ugly of the decade. One of the more risible sights is seeing huge amounts of largely forgotten acts desperately trying to scramble on board the dance music gravy train by either adding new Acid House drum beats to substandard pop records or by hurriedly throwing together songs using these new beats and sounds and forgetting things such as verses, melody or seemingly anything of worth.

Then into this heady mix one evening strolled Electribe 101. They stood out from the chancers and the fame hungry for a number of reasons. One was that their songs had substance, the music behind the beats was strong enough to have stood up on its own should they have needed to, blending soul and blues into their modernity. A second reason was their air of cool – in an age of seeming desperation to be part of the next big thing, Electribe 101 seemed aloof from such concerns. The third reason was that in singer Billie Ray Martin they had someone who could successfully front the band, add personality and who had the vocal ability to lift the band above others in their class.

While the band were not as commercially successful as the likes of, say, Technotronic or Bizarre Inc., their records have maintained their credibility and been re-released many times over the years, revealing them to have aged well.

Despite all this, Electribe 101 were dropped by their record label as part of an end of year cull in 1991, very probably as a result of Phonogram not knowing how to market them; whether to aim them at the dance, pop or more adult markets. As a result, 2nd album Electribal Soul went unreleased. Martin reworked several of her songs for her solo career, having a substantial hit with Your Loving Arms in 1994.

Appreciation of Electribe 101 has remained fairly steady since then and, finally, the long lost Electribal Soul has been made available. Listening to it now is not the nostalgia heavy experience we might have expected, with the emphasis being firmly placed on the 2nd word in the album’s title rather than the first. Billy Ray Martin recalls “There was a degree of confidence among us when we came to write the second album.” This shows as the songs that make up Electribal Soul show a fine band intent on making soul music with both a capital and a small S.

The mixing of soul and house was not uncommon back in those Balearic days, but Electribe 101 get the balance spot on, the disparate elements of their sound do not challenge or threaten each other, but exist naturally to create an album that is lush and expansive.