Twenty-eight years after its initial release, Alison Limerick’s debut single ‘Where Love Lives’ is still on heavy rotation by top DJs in clubs around the World. As a third generation of clubbers and ravers get down to its uplifting lyrics and that infectious piano riff, calling it a classic is almost an understatement. It was a UK Top 10 single upon its re-release in 1996 and was voted “Best Dance Single of All Time” by MixMag Magazine that same year. In BBC Radio 2’s Listeners & DJ’s Poll “The Greatest Ever Dance Record” (2008), ‘Where Love Lives’ came in at #5 after Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean’, James Brown’s ‘Sex Machine’, Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and Derrick May’s ‘Strings Of Life’.
‘Where Love Lives’ was written and produced by Lati Kronlund, who soon after the record’s first release, left London and settled in New York where he started the Brooklyn Funk Essentials together with legendary producer Arthur Baker and a selection of the city’s best young musicians, singers, poets and DJs.
Fast forward five BFE albums later to January 2016, as Alison does a cameo performance with BFE at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London. They end the set with a funky rendition of ‘Where Love Lives’, hugely appreciated by the audience and the band. Consequently, Alison joins the band and becomes their new lead singer.
June 15 sees the international release of Brooklyn Funk Essentials’ recording of ‘Where Love Lives’ on Dorado Records with Ms Limerick on lead vocals. “It’s a funky version, played all live in the studio by the band”, says Kronlund on a Skype-line from Stockholm, where the band has gathered to record their sixth studio album. “It is really a tribute to the Frankie Knuckles and Dave Morales remix of the song from the early nineties, but also to the Philly disco and Chicago house that was the song’s original inspiration”, he continues.
BFE are taking time between sessions in the studio to play a few select shows this summer, starting in Paris at New Morning on June 29 and hitting London’s Jazz Café on July 19.