The Fantaaaaaaaaaaaaastic.

Artist: Aleem featuring Leroy Burgess
Title: Casually Formal
Year: 1986
Label: Atlantic
Format: Vinyl LP (Original)
Flwrpt Rating of this Record: 4.0/5.0

Review
You have to be a fan of 80′s music to really appreciate this album, it really captures the essence of that 1986 sound…and captures it very well. I LOVE this record, bottom line. The Aleems are twin brothers (Taharqa & Tunde-Ra Aleem) who teamed up with a buddy, Leroy Burgess (the king of boogie and former Black Ivory lead singer), who just so happened to live in the same building as they did in Harlem growing up. Turns out that the album was completed by the twin brothers alone, but they did not like the way that their vocals sounded on the tracks, so they asked Burgess to join the group as lead singer, and to help write, produce and compose some of the tracks. That was the best move that they could have made, because this turned out to be a CLASSIC underground boogie and soul lp. The sound is really synthetic…REALLY synthetic, some of the tracks were produced using programs on the 1986 Apple IIc computer…that shows that they embraced the technology, as well as the switch to electronic instruments and synthetic sounds. I can dig that, because a lot of musicians who made the switch were heavily scrutinized by traditionalist elitists. The Aleems featuring Leroy Burgess actually made beautiful music, and the arrangements by the trio are fantaaaaaaaaaaaastic! They all play instruments, so they understand chords, and they had a formula for “feel good”…so the sounds were something of beauty, the electronic instrumentation was on point.

Herbie Hancock put it best…”the electronic equipment is like an axe, it can be used to chop wood to build a house, or it can be used as a weapon to slaughter your neighbor. With synthesizers, they can produce sounds that hurt the ears, or produce beautiful sounds that draw you in…”. So it’s really about WHO is using it and HOW, not WHAT you use.

Enjoy.

Check out the sound!

Think

• Play

Stay

• Play

Loves On Fire

• Play

Design
The design is definitely cheesy. But you MUST give it to these grown men for going hard enough to rock out with white tuxedo jackets and dress shirts, with red bow-ties and cumberbun’s!!! LOL!!! They also have on some sort of weird Wrangler-looking denim with the snow white Reebok’s on…not to mention that these cats are captured in mid air (shaking my head in shame)…and Leroy Burgess has the nerve to sport a jerry-curl (he’s still the MAN though!). The photographer and stylist should have been fired immediately!!! LOL!!!

I will say, however, that although the props on the back cover (specifically the table and chairs) are lame, the composition and the idea…I like…which is that a tab was paid, and a couple split, to get home and reeeeeeeeeeeeally get the night started.

Additional info on Aleem featuring Leroy Burgess