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Beat Funktion
Beat Funktion started out in Uppsala 2007 as a temporary five-piece setup for a number of spontaneous club gigs where music was needed for a young dancing audience. To shape the band's repertoire, pianist Daniel Lantz and tenor sax player Olle Thunström took inspiration from musicians and bands within groove-related genres in the 70s and late 60s like James Brown, Bob James, Eumir Deodato, Roy Ayers, Fela Kuti, Curtis Mayfield, Lonnie Liston Smith, Stevie Wonder, Average White Band, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Donny Hathaway, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and others, not to mention film music by composers like Lalo Schifrin and Bill Conti. This resulted in a series of original compositions tailor-made for the band, which utilized the stable, dance-friendly and lush-sounding framework of pumping disco paired with the rhythmic and harmonic freedom of whole-hearted jazz improvisation. Accordingly, the sound of the band was born.
After a number of overwhelmingly successful performances, enjoyed by listeners as well as dancers, the band became a steady working unit and since 2008 it is an impressive six- piece-band consisting of Karl Olandersson on the trumpet, Olle Thunström on the tenor sax, Johan
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Beat Funktion: Green Man
by Jim Olin
Swedish group Beat Funktion could be described as a band, but they strike me as something even deeper than that: a musical collective with an extremely broad approach and a really keen ear for making complex arrangements sound accessible and catchy. The songs on Green Man blur the lines between funk, blues, jazz, and fusion, going for a really unique sound. Think Miles Davis jamming with Herbie Hancock! The title track itself is a perfect example to get ...
read moreBeat Funktion: Olympus
by Geannine Reid
The seventies brought many things: bell-bottoms, Lee Majors, Farrah Fawcett, Disco, Nixon and Carter, The Godfather, the Ramones; Billie Jean King and Phyllis Schlafly to NOW and the ERA; from the Energy Crisis to Roe v. Wade. The Seventies is an incisively provocative and commonly misunderstood era. Is it an eminently forgettable period in our American culture? Well, that is for another article, but one positive note that has grown from that time period is that danceable beat that finds ...
read moreBeat Funktion: Mandy's Secret
by Geannine Reid
Beat Funktion; what is its funktion? Daniel Lantz is the man behind Beat Funktion's unique sound that blends '70s funk, groove, soul, disco and afro-beat with the language and sensibilities of jazz. Beat Funktion pays close attention to getting across the more danceable and familiar binary rhythm, that is felt as the groove." That is what seems to be the funktion of Lantz's beat; its association with funk, a genre that created the groove" rhythm, which was spear-headed by James ...
read moreBeat Funktion: Moon Town
by C. Michael Bailey
"Swedish Vintage Jazz-Funk-Disco Band." That is the auspicious description of Beat Funktion, an inventive band of Scandinavians intent on teasing the worthwhile parts of disco away from the not-so-worthwhile parts. But disco is but a small part of the alchemy arranged on Moon Town. This is more funk-jazz updated to the contemporary. Heavily back-beat laden, driven by bass and electric piano. The band was formed in 2007 to present jazz in an environment that also catered to a young dancing ...
read moreAn interview with Daniel Lantz, keyboardist for Swedish jazz-funk band Beat Funktion
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Lauren Rogers
As the keyboardist of the jazz-funk outfit Beat Funktion, Daniel Lantz is at the center of a disco maelstrom. Taken as a whole instead of the sum of its parts, Beat Funktion is a fireball of pop smarts, a living, breathing groove machine that grinds together the sweat-drenched vintage R&B of James Brown with the sexy hooks of '70s dance music and the soulful depth and instrumental complexities of jazz. On their debut album, The Plunge, Beat Funktion gyrates with ...
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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson