I-Level: I-Level (1983)

Thatcher’s England must have been a messed up time to grow up in, right? At the height of her pull, Essex group, I-Level, released a wonderfully romantic, uptempo electronic-R&B single called “Minefield” near after England’s ridiculous war with Argentina and promptly got banned from the radio. Trying to go for their third, hit single, with a slightly innocent tongue-in-cheek song, who knew that it could have jumpstarted the end to such a trailblazing crew. Before Loose Ends, The System, Soul II Soul, and the Soul Connection crew did their thing, there had to be some groups willing to stuck their necks out to advance a decidedly British-kind of modern soul music. I-Level’s self-titled debut is one of my favorites in doing so, not just for what it sounds like, but how it did it (as mercurial as their short career was).

Before there was such a band called I-Level, there was a decidedly talented Polish-English musician called Joe Dworniak. Raised on Jazz Rock, the Weather Report, latin music, and “alternative” things published in Melody Maker, Joe struggled to find musicians who were willing to create the kind of music he was after. Mixing punk, funk, and jazz, initially he created a group called Shake Shake! to create dance punk music in the vein of Gang of Four. Then, a short stint in Spain and in England somehow brought him into contact with a young singer from Sierra Leone, Sam Jones, who was fronting a reggae band called Brimstone with keyboardist Duncan Bridgeman. Together, they’d join forces as I-Level and create a demo tape of “Give Me”, which would become their first single and be used to sign them to the largely R&B-free Virgin Records label.

I-Level’s self-titled debut is fascinating because it gives you an above ground view of the various styles younger Brits were trying to digest and fuse into R&B and to make it decidedly of their own kind. You name it, everything from dancehall, post-disco, electro, new wave, and post-punk were styles keyed in by this trio who seemed more in tune with the music heard on the back streets of England than on in America’s shores. Luckily, as Joe was the owner of his own small recording studio, I-Level were free to explore how to exactly do all this new fusion, far from the label’s hand.

What strikes me about I-Level’s debut is how melancholic it feels. It certainly tries to speak of the unease even casual dalliances must have been for youths back then. Never entirely “adult” I-Level has that in-between feeling of young lads and gals navigating through equal measures of partying, wilding, and loving. Updating “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” for the streets of Brixton, to return to the beginning, “Minefield” should have been a proper hit. Boogie binds take songs like “Treacle” into a half-motion mining proto-house ideas, I-Level was unknowingly stumbling too. It’s something you hear in the looseness in its downtempo arrangements — equal parts dub and knotty soul music, meeting nicely askew naivete.

Favorited track of mine, “Heart Aglow”, strike personal notes (somehow) sweeping in Joe’s special time in Spain by twinging “Balearic” feelings into some decidedly minimal torch balladry in a way that reminds me of very tender things one neglects. Rare is a track that you can hear speak of a love, that one can hear speak in your significant other, but also in your significant other born out of yourself and that other, or for that special one you want to love. Rarely will you hear a cuica sound so beautiful outside of its native Brazil. The sweeping strings and rollicking percussion just about nail it as being a sleeper hit as one of the loveliest songs from the ‘80s.

The A-side ends on outstanding dubby uptempo soul that sounds like little else from its time. It’s what made Imagination’s own, other world so interesting…and what makes cut like “Stone Heart” and “Give Me” so special (notwithstanding their “boyish” screeds). America really wasn’t in tune to this, to their own fault. In the end, one can imagine Larry Heard whetting his fingers to get the U.S. Remix of the latter, it was UK House music before such a thing existed. Sam Jones’ leftfield acapella take on “Woman” even nails a bit of future R&B, in a way that’s both decidedly tender and decidedly affecting as soon as that sweeping arrangement fills in and Ray Carless from another pioneering UK jazz funk group, Incognito, swirls in with his pleading sax work. It was epic drama, in a pint-size space (at least for those trying to become “real men”).

As much as I-Level predicted the future of UK soul music, should have been hits never materialized and chart-friendly, leftfield dance cuts like the ones you’d find on the flip side — “No. 4”, “Teacher”, and “Music” — suffered from the lack of radio airplay and scant record sales. I-Level would come back two years later with Shake! But by then all the cats in this band, and Joe especially, had their hearts set on other ventures that’d turn out far more successful. However, for me, there’s just something so nostalgic, inviting, and refreshing about their debut. Must be the kind of heart worn on their sleeves. There are moments that just move you and others full of emotive pause, in a way that still sound fresh and timeless, in a way that warrants someone (finally) taking it out of its never-reissued ghetto.

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