Eric Roberson has been making music for over ten years and on his latest release, …Left, he showcases that modern day soul still has a heartbeat. His voice is distinctive and strong; his music is personal and meaningful.

The primary raw material for Dungen’s music is time. By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about the shaggy Swede’s “retro” psychedelic washes, his love for Jimi Hendrix, and his penchant for heady jams that recall the folk, rock, and psychedelia of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

“To this day, I frustrate the hell out of my bandmates, because I’m the only person who doesn’t know how to read, write, or notate music at all,” says Cameron Bird, founder and main songwriter of the genre-defying Architecture in Helsinki.

“I’ll be writing songs, and someone will say, ‘What note is that?’ or ‘What key is that in?’ and it doesn’t mean anything to me at all. I only learned which string was which on the guitar over the last two years,” he laughs.

When The Fucking Champs first started playing music together, they were something of an anomaly. As a progressive hard rock band with no bass, virtually no vocals, and albums titled with Zepplin-esque Roman numerals, people really didn’t know what to make of the San Francisco trio.

The ever-elusive heat of ’60s and ’70s soul is seldom realized by the performers who aspire to it. Music that calls itself “soul” in this day and age is frequently – and inevitably – strained through the filter of hip hop, whose various (largely digital) subgenres are the proud descendants of funk, R&B, gospel, and soul.