El Michels Affair is another loose collaboration from the NYC session musicians’ awesome club that has made Daptone Records so amazing over the last decade or so. Cats from the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, Budos Band and the like. Think the closest modern equivalent to the amazing house bands at Stax, Motown etc. at the height of the soul era. They have made sort of a specialty out of interpolating Wu-Tang classics into their instrumentals, and have actually had the opportunity to back up several Clan emcees live. Enter the 37th Chamber will collect several of these renditions and will drop on April 21 via Fat Beats and the splendid Truth & Soul label. So the RZA sampled the cream of funk and soul from the early ’70s for Wu-Tang, then El Michels Affair took his compositions and re-arranged them back into instrumental music. I always find it fascinating when music folds and unfolds and transmorgifies itself like that, and it works. It seems to come off well here. If you’re curious, go ahead and take a listen to El Michels Affair on their version of “C.R.E.A.M.”