Anthony Davis, AKA Ant, one half of the legendary, pioneering hip-hop group Atmosphere, has announced the first volume of a four part series of instrumentals. Collection of Sounds: Volume 1, his debut solo album, will be released on Friday 6th September via Rhymesayers Entertainment, and today Ant has shared “Leather Soul” + “That Old Bongo Joint.”
In his own words, he shares "I guess I have the audacity to believe I could put out a four volume instrumental music project, composed of music I’ve made over the last 30 years, and call it great art."
The son of a military family, Ant grew up bouncing between locales: Texas, California, New York, Colorado, even as far away as Germany. While moving every couple of years presented plenty of challenges, it also exposed Ant to a wide array of different people and cultures. It also helped nurture his burgeoning love of music. Ant’s father, only 20 years his senior, was an avid record collector. “He was into funk and jazz and soul music and stuff,” Ant says. “When I’m ten years old, he’s only 30, and rap is out: he was listening to it, but he didn’t know the difference between Grandmaster Flash and Rick James. To him it was the same thing—this is all funk, this is all disco, this is just all music.”
“There was always this weird dream in my head that I could get somewhere,” says Davis. As one half of Atmosphere, the longtime Minneapolis resident has carved out the type of career that aspiring musicians across the world imagine as they cut their teeth in home studios and on small stages. Yet while decades of sold-out tours and critical acclaim might have been, at one time, an abstract notion to the now 53-year-old, he always had a sense that he could spin his ingenuity behind turntables into a living. While the last 30 years serve as proof positive that he was right, his new four-volume collection of instrumental work, Collection of Sounds, illuminates the variety of styles and skills that made that inkling a reality.
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