Larry Gold – Travelin’ feat. Kameelah Waheed

Whilst my grand plan to hit shuffle on my iPod every day, and then to write about the first track to come along, didn’t last much past the new year, I have been using shuffle a lot recently. But rather than finding individual tracks, I’m using it to hit upon whole albums I can listen to (another New Year’s Resolution was to fight the atomisation of music).

And, this morning, whilst driving back from dropping my fiancée off at the airport at some ungodly hour, I stumbled across an album I only just remember buying, Larry Gold Presents Don Cello & Friends, which is on the excellent bbe record label (and hopefully wasn’t hit by the recent Sony fire.

It sees Larry Gold, the man behind many of the amazing string arrangements on 70s disco and philly-soul classics, including the amazing Ain’t No Stopping Us Now, teaming up with a host of modern artists to create updates of classics (including Ain’t No Stopping Us) as well as coming up with new tracks that blends the best of past & present: Travelin’ is one of the latter.

It sees wailing guitars, subtle scratching, strings that make you think you’ve died and gone to Philly heaven, and a great vocal by female rapper/singer Kameelah.

Do I belong in California?

Destiny’s in the land of Georgia?

Is there gold in Miami, Florida?

If Dublin actually had such a thing as a summer, I think this would be my anthem of 2011 (ignoring the fact that it came out a couple of years ago): I’ve had it on repeat for much of the last hour, and it really just keeps getting better.

Do yourself a favour and give yourself some Gold.

Road sign by Keoni Cabral on flickr

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