Shaft - ISAAC HAYES****

Theme From Shaft/Bumpy's Lament/Walk From Regio's/Ellie's Love Theme/Shaft's Cab Ride/Cafe Regio's/Early Sunday Morning/Be Yourself/A Friend's Place/Soulsville/No Name Bar/Bumpy's Blues/Shaft Strikes Again/Do Your Thing/The End Theme

Soul artist Isaac Hayes achieved his greatest commercial success with the Academy Award winning soundtrack to the film Shaft. The theme single would reach No. 1 in the US and No. 4 in the UK. (US:1 UK:17)

“The Theme From Shaft is obviously the best song on the album, being an absolute classic. Hayes’s skills as composer and writer are in full effect, and the combination of funk guitar with orchestration (including a prominent flute) is amazing.”

“This is an album of very high quality music, with Hayes able to create a significant amount of interesting and enjoyable music. Shaft may be less appealing to some because of the high number of instrumental tracks, but nevertheless it comes highly recommended.”

“I have always had a soft spot for the single taken from the Shaft soundtrack. I always assumed this album would be funky soul music, so it was quite a surprise to observe that it has nothing at all to do with soul but features, in the main, smooth laid-back jazz. The trouble is, most of it is far too laid back and a lot of the music here borders on the bland, which is quite nice but nothing more.”

“Theme From Shaft is, of course, the untouchable, iconic track on here and is perfect in nearly every way. But the rest of the album is still full of groundbreaking, cinematic, funky soul.”

“Some relaxed and laid-back mostly instrumental soul/jazz/funk pieces that are quite pleasant indeed. A nice album to be heard as background music, although I don’t think I will revisit it that often. Do Your Thing is a different kind of breed that seems a bit out of place within the album’s context. It’s a twenty minutes long monster that features a killer rhythm section with a great brass attack. It also has an extremely impressive and long psychedelic guitar solo, a groovy bass line and synthesizers here and there. Even some Latin-flavoured percussion appear occasionally.”

“After the iconic Theme From Shaft, you begin to notice something is missing. These are nice songs, but it's a soundtrack in the truest sense, most being a straight up film score. The songs are begging to have vocals put on top of them, and while they're still good, it's hard not to feel that the format of a soundtrack was a constraint.”