Some music is just destined to pour out of apartment windows onto muggy city streets-so it's kind of a shame this debut from El Michels Affair couldn't have come out just a little earlier in the summer. This is especially unfortunate, seeing as "Sounding Out The City", a real diamond of the current Brooklyn deep-soul revival, slept on a shelf for two years before finding release. Leon Michels (formerly of organ quartet the Mighty Imperials) leads a nine-piece soul train through 11 tracks that, sure, conjure up the Meters and the JBs, but manage to freshen themselves through lively production and a resistance to drab looping.

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