Jason Miles – Soul Summit / Various Artists – The Harlem Experiment

If Jason Miles’ Soul Summit recasts soul music as repertory, and triangulates Memphis, Detroit and Augusta, Georgia, as outposts of deep feeling, The Harlem Experiment sticks close to 125th Street and makes a case for soul as light-footed but intellectualized dance music. Kinetic, nostalgic and tonally near-perfect, Harlem digs deeper than Summit, but both records offer their individualized thrills. They suggest that the light-entertainment possibilities of funk and R&B aren’t likely to be exhausted anytime soon.

The Harlem Experiment begins with the heavy funk of “One For Jackie”, a James Brown-style instrumental featuring a droll horn arrangement. Its sense of dynamics hip-hop-derived, the number lays out a cinematic vision of funk. “Rigor Mortis” swings like a segment of a blaxploitation soundtrack.

With a core band that includes guitarist Carlos Alomar and drummer Steve Berrios, Harlem never flags. Taj Mahal sounds suitably gravel-voiced and blithe on Cab Calloway’s “Reefer Man”, while Don Byron’s sinuous clarinet comments on the action. “Harlem River Drive” turns mambo into psychedelica, with Alomar’s guitar and arranger Steven Bernstein’s trumpet a phased-out foil for an exemplary rhythm track. Even better is the instrumental version of “A Rose In Spanish Harlem”, which turns the 1961 Ben E. King hit into something half-remembered and ominous.

At its best, Harlem re-imagines soul and funk as polyglot myth, and does so self-consciously but never intrusively. Soul Summit documents one night in March 2007 in Reading, Pennsylvania, with a crack band that includes keyboardist Miles, bassist Bob Babbitt, drummer Steve Ferrone, and guitarists Reggie Young and Sherrod Barnes. It’s never as rigorous or as Latin-accented as Harlem, but Summit covers considerable ground.

Richard Elliot’s tenor sax solo on the version of Autry DeWalt’s “Shotgun” (a 1965 Junior Walker hit) suggests the abstractions of Sonny Rollins’ G-Man as much as it does any locked-in solo hidden away on a hit single, and Barnes’ guitar inhabits a post-John Scofield world of harmonically advanced funk. On Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn’s “It Tears Me Up”, Young takes a typically modest yet structurally perfect solo, and he masterfully introduces a series of answering phrases to Mike Mattison’s vocal as the song ends.

Summit works as a slimmed-down, modernized version of southern soul and funk. “James Brown Medley” comprises “I Feel Good” and “I Got The Feeling”, and goes on for nearly twelve minutes, complete with band introductions. It’s a suitably open-ended finish to a suggestive, accomplished record.