Budos Band Bring 'Stronger' Songs to New Album -- Exclusive Stream

The Budos Band, Staten Island, N.Y.'s finest purveyor's of the Afrobeat tradition, are set to return Aug. 10 with their third album, and they've given Spinner an exclusive preview stream of it. Aptly titled 'Budos Band III,' the 12-song set features a healthy dose of Afrobeat along with some more classic R&B and rock traditions.

"This is the album we're most proud of," Jared Tankel, Budos Band baritone saxophonist, tells Spinner. "This album, more than any of the others, was a longer writing process, mostly in part to scheduling at Daptone. They had the Sharon Jones project ['I Learned the Hard Way'], so we were waiting for that to finish."

The material for 'III' was borne over the last two years, in between tours and working around some of the members' day jobs as public school teachers. Even with the delays, this stretched-out writing process worked in their favor. "It allowed us to really refine the songs a lot better; we were able to play some of them out live for at least a year and gauge what works, what doesn't," Tankel says. "Not that our previous albums were rushed, but this one was more methodical and thought-out. The songs are that much stronger as a result."

When the Budos Band finally entered Brooklyn's Daptone Studios, they had pretty much every song so tightly constructed that they only needed two days of recording to get everything down. "That was partly due to the fact that we had played most of the songs a bunch prior to the recording," Tankel says. "For whatever reason, our focus was like laser beams. Some we just did two takes and both were great -- it was a matter of picking the best one."

'Unbroken, Unshaven,' the first single is currently available on iTunes and anyone pre-ordering 'Budos Band III' from the Daptone Store gets a free, exclusive 45 RPM single of the non-album track 'Kakal.' The Budos Band will join Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings this Saturday, Aug 7, for a free show in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Prospect Park. From there, they head out West for a month-long run of dates, starting on Aug. 11 at the Casbah in San Diego.