Imagination
This killer set from the Whispers, Imagination, dropped in 1980 as disco, apparently dead according to the larger music industry, was simply mutating into various new forms, including the SOLAR label’s high-end electro-soul/boogie sound, perfectly exemplified here. Imagination is a confident, strident and joyful affair, the Scott twins’ lead vocals just soar, and the whole thing is pristinely produced and polished to a fine shine. The title tune opens up with a taut drum fill and bold brassy dancefloor clarion call that coalesces into this ridiculously tight, layered, perfectly functioning boogie machine of a track, and before you’ve had time to take it in you’re getting swept along by swooping melodic peaks and troughs and euphoric twists and turns. And bar a couple of romantic retro ballads, the rest of the album follows the same pattern, including the undoubted highpoint and the location of one of soul music’s finest basslines (supplied by the track’s producer Leon Sylvers III), “It’s A Love Thing.”