The Midnight Hour is the partnership of Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The two actually met and planned to make an album together in 2013 but got sidetracked when they began working on the score for Luke Cage. Last year, they were finally able to release their debut album, which was self-titled. They toured a lot to support the album, and in the process worked up a really tight live show. In fact, they liked playing live so much that they decided to record a live album for a small audience at their home base, Linear Labs in Los Angeles. The result is Live at Linear Labs.

For the tour and the recording, the duo needed to recruit a full ensemble to recreate the sound of their album. Adrian Younge played electric piano and Ali Shaheed Muhammad played bass, and then they added Loren Odon and Angela Munoz on vocals, Jack Waterson on Guitar, Dave Henderson on drums, Shai Golan on alto sax, Zach Ramacier on trumpet, Korina Davis on violin, and Sarah Tarablus on viola. It’s not a full orchestra, but this ensemble does a great job of not just playing well together but creating a really full and lush sound that more than covers up for any lack of personnel. If you are familiar with their first album, you know that The Midnight Hour are seeking to put themselves in conversation with the great symphonic soul of the ‘70s, taking inspiration from artists such as Quincy Jones, David Axelrod, Galt MacDermot, Donald Byrd or Dennis Coffey. It’s a very sweet and composed type of (mostly) instrumental soul music, but when we get the live album, there’s a little more room to let your hair down and allow for energy and connection with the audience. First and foremost, it’s nice to get a sense of Younge and Muhammad as instrumentalists and live performers, since they are largely known as producers and studio artists. They are, however, also consummate musicians, and they’ve put together an ensemble that knows how to play live and connect with the audience. Each person in the group gets a chance to shine, but really this album is about the overall feeling and the great arrangements to the songs that allow you to just get lost in the grooves and enjoy yourself in the moment. Since they are playing at their home studio for an audience of about 200, they are also in an optimal position to have the performance engineered just as they’d like it, and you’re not sacrificing sound quality in the way that you sometime do with live albums.

Live at Linear Labs is a great complementary piece to The Midnight Hour’s debut album, and it helps to form a connection to the group in a way that allows yourself to imagine seeing them perform live in a club, and not just as studio musicians holed up in some corner of Los Angeles. It’s fun and full of energy and top notch musicianship.