Sandra St. Victor – XI
She’s back with her eleventh studio album. Sandra St. Victor, the Dallas-born, Amsterdam-based soul singer, forever associated with the Family Stand and their groundbreaking “Ghetto Heaven”, just delivered a brilliant and groove-heavy new album earlier this month. She collaborated with a lot of artists for this gem, among them British multi-instrumentalist, producer and remixer Kaidi Tatham. Together with producer Patrick Gibin (founder of Mother Tongue Records), they created two fascinating covers: “Moonchild”, first released on bassist Captain Sky’s LP “Pop Goes The Captain” (1979), gets a fine house treatment here with Sandra’s voice amazingly flexible, versatile, and powerful throughout. And “Tiki Tiki Donga”, which came out on Syreeta’s 1977 LP “One To One”, produced and written by Leon Ware, turns into an incredibly funky workout, complete with quirky, Herbie-styled keys and very strong strings. A classic masterpiece tastefully transported into the future. Just brilliant.
The album opens with a collaboration with Italian musician and producer edb (Edoardo Della Bitta): another house-flavored, stomping groove on “Life” generates the best out of Sandra’s strong vocal performance. Sandra teams with Lalah Hathaway (they both were on stage for one song at Lalah’s Amsterdam show at Paradiso last year) on the beautiful soul romp “No More Water”. Their voices gel perfectly. A true delight. Elsewhere on the record, we get the funky, handclap meets brass sexiness of “Makes Me Wanna Fall In Love Again” and the sultry “Black Ice”, one of the album’s highlights. “Regarding Leon” is a late-night midtempo jazz meets soul piece which also gets remix treatment here. And she revisits her own “Dizzy”, a track she recorded for her 2001 Expansion Records LP “Gemini: Both Sides”. It stays crisp and cool, with Sandra’s rich voice at the front.
Mocean Worker guests on the dark and brooding “Go Up, Moses”. And her old bandmade V. Jeffrey Smith co-wrote and co-produced the feisty boogie jazz “What Would Miles Do”. Together with “Womanizer” and “Build A World”, Sandra delivers a powerhouse performance here and we’re more than happy to have her back.
