Detroit's dj Kenny "Moodymann" Dixon debuted with a series of singles
that mixed live instruments with samples and that bridged deep house with
disco-music, funk, soul and jazz of the 1970s, notably the hypnotic
I Can't Kick This Feeling When It Hits/ Music People (1997), but also
Don't Be Misled (1996), Dem Young Sconies (1997) and
In Loving Memory (1997).
Some of them were compiled on
Silentintroduction (Planet E, 1997) that also includes
the jazzy eleven-minute Sunday Morning, a 1998 single.
Past the childish sound collage of Radio,
Mahogany Brown (Peacefrog Records, 1998) contains the
funky On the Run, the
soul-tinged Me and My People's Eyes and the
gospel-tinged Black Sunday.
Moodymann matured in the new century.
Forevernevermore (Peacefrog Records, 2000) contains one of his classics,
the eight-minute jam
The Thief That Stole My Sad Days, that weds rowdy soul music and jazzy lounge piano, besides the very "disco" Don't You Want My Love
and the thumping Tribute, while the
14-minute trance of Forevernevermore is a bit facile.
Silence In The Secret Garden (Peacefrog Records, 2003) was perhaps his
first cohesive album, an album that doesn't feel like a collection of singles.
Liveinla 1998 evokes distant lands with its
tribal beat and African chant,
Shine is lazy liquid soul-jazz,
Yesterdays Party Watta Bout It is laid-back party music with an odd tempo,
and the ten-minute Silence in the Secret Garden is a banger with a romantic sax and a spiraling polyrhythm, another classic.
Black Mahogani (Peacefrog Records, 2004) is even more ambitious.
If the nine-minute I'm Doing Fine is too laid-back, like a sedated
Stevie Wonder,
but Shades of Jae turns the combination of
samples (Bob James' Spunky) and catchy beat into poetry.
If the 16-minute Mahogani 9000/ Black Mahogani is a trivial funk with
trivial samples,
Runaway is a dreamy 12-minute sound collage with jazzy piano and moaning vocals, and a melancholy ending of sax and guitar, that transcends any genre.
The EP Black Mahogani II (2004) added the 17-minute
When She Follows to the set of his smooth jazz transfigurations,
a tour de force that expanded his horizons beyond house music.
Det.Riot '67 (2008) delivers two classics of his live dj sets,
Freeki Muthafucker and Hello 2morrow, but the rest is filler.
The mini-album Anotha Black Sunday (2009) has a shorter funk-jazz-house
fusion a` la Runaway: Mamma's Hand.
Picture This (Scion Audio/Visual, 2012) and
ABCD (KDJ, 2013) are vastly inferior albums of predictable party music.
Both contain 9 Nites 2 Nowhere, but best is
the ten-minute
It's 2 Late 4 U And Me, which sounds like a parodistic house-style remix of a Giorgio Moroder/ Donna Summer disco jam.
The 27-song Moodymann - KDJ44 (KDJ, 2014) contains the eleven-minute
Sloppy Cosmic but mostly it feels like a collection of unfinished sketches.
The five-song EP Sinner (2019) is another eclectic collection, de facto
an "odds and ends" compilation, with only If I Gave You My Love to justify its existence.
Even more mediocre, Taken Away (2020) contains nine brief pieces.
Meanwhile, Dixon was also a member of the Detroit project 3 Chairs with
Theo Parrish and Rick Wilhite.
They released the EP Three Chairs (1998), that contains
Parrish's Rain For Jimmy, and the full-length Three Chairs 3 (2004), with the 17-minute Blackbone Waltz and the 13-minute Dance Of Nubia.
Spectrum (2009) is a 3 Chairs retrospective.
