THE MASTERLINK SOUL SESSIONS | VOLUME ONE

The Masterlink Soul Sessions | Volume One brings together ten live-in-the-studio performances from the early years of the Masterlink Sessions.

The idea behind the project is simple: invite an artist into Masterlink Productions, place an exceptional group of musicians around them and capture the complete performance live. Redtenbacher’s Funkestra forms the core house band, but each session begins with the featured artist and the song—not with a fixed Funkestra sound imposed upon it.

Our role is to listen, arrange and create a musical setting in which that particular voice can be heard at full strength.

Shine the light on all.

LISTENING

TEN ARTISTS, TEN DIFFERENT MUSICAL WORLDS

Across the album, established artists and emerging voices meet musicians who have spent years playing together. Original songs sit alongside radically reconsidered classics, with soul broad enough to accommodate blues, funk, gospel, rock, jazz and whatever else the material requires.

Jo Harman and Orphy Robinson bring spaciousness and quiet intensity to “Cloudy” and “Cyprus Avenue.” Sarah Jane Morris takes on the uncompromising spirit of Betty Davis with “Anti Love Song,” while Amba Tremain turns “Superstition” into a slow-burning soul performance in 3/4.

Elsewhere, Diana Silveira, Georgia Van Etten, Jade Like The Stone, Jana Varga and Eddy Smith each lead the musicians into a different musical world.

The singers change and the line-ups change, but the common thread is live interaction: voices, bass, drums, percussion, guitars, keyboards, horns and vibraphone responding to one another in real time.

The performances retain the small risks, sudden lifts and unplanned details that can disappear when music is assembled one part at a time.

FROM FILMED SESSIONS TO A PHYSICAL ALBUM

These performances first existed as individual films. Heard together on one album, they reveal something else: the sound of a musical community forming over time.

The Masterlink Soul Sessions | Volume One is therefore not a conventional compilation or an album built around one fixed house style. It documents ten occasions when an artist, a band, a studio and a film crew arrived at the same place at the same time—and somebody remembered to press record.

PHYSICAL CD EDITION

  • Ten live-in-the-studio performances

  • Featured vocalists and changing session line-ups

  • Soul, blues, funk, gospel, jazz and rock

  • Redtenbacher’s Funkestra as the core house band

  • Recorded at Masterlink Productions

  • Released by RSB Records

Physical CD available from the RSB Records store.