FUNKADELIC — Maggot Brain (review)

FUNKADELIC — Maggot Brain album cover Album · 1971 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Warthur
Funkadelic's third album opens with Maggot Brain, perhaps the greatest improvisation the band ever recorded. Wisely, George Clinton opted to mostly mute the rest of the band's performance on this (you can just about hear them in the background) in order to shine a spotlight on Eddie Hazel's glorious guitar solo, which surely ranks as one of the best ever.

The album follows this up with some short-form songs, finely crafted funk gems which show that the songwriting side of the band has finally caught up to the improvisation side - the best one probably being the menacing and confrontational You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks. The concluding long composition Wars of Armageddon is a wild freakout replete with demented samples and vocal snippets to create an audial cartoon of a demented world. Overall, the album is the culmination of all of George Clinton's musical development to this point, and I certainly have sympathy for the view that Funkadelic's albums after this at best only managed to equal this one - never exceed it.

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