The funk Isaac Hayes and Willie Hutch wrote for American crime films in the early 1970s has a second home in Hamburg, a city whose funk scene runs through The Mighty Mocambos, Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band and the Légère Recordings label. The Winston Brothers come straight out of that scene, and “Get On Down” opens their second album, Sweets, out on 6 November via Ohio’s Colemine Records. It starts at full tempo: a hard breakbeat, choppy guitar chanks and a two-man horn section.

Multi-instrumentalist and producer Sebastian Nagel and drummer Lucas Kochbeck formed the band as a school project, and Nagel describes the partnership in one line: “It’s a family thing, and we really know each other well.” Both play in Bacao, Nagel has also played with the Mocambos, and Kochbeck with Hamburg Spinners, part of a circuit where the same players keep turning up in each other’s line-ups. Sweets draws on that circuit, with Kimo Eiserbeck on saxophone and flute, Hans Stephan on trumpet and Carsten Meyer, the Hamburg keyboardist known as Erobique, on synths. Extra drums come from Max Weissenfeldt, once of Munich’s The Poets of Rhythm and now working as Max Whitefield.

Sax and trumpet stick to short, angular stabs, the punctuating role horns play on the Hayes and Hutch scores. Midway the band drop into a dub-style section with delay on the instrumental parts, and the drums carry on underneath: like Drift, their 2022 debut, the track is built on the break.

Stream “Get On Down” HERE and order Sweets ahead of release through THIS LINK