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A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I tried to start a rap crew called the Holigang. We were to radiate a festive spirit and rap only about the holidays, but after a few practices, it was revealed I was not a good rapper and the group was probably too unfocused to ever write an actual song.

Today, I'm humbled and happy to announce local jazz-rap girlfriend group THEESatisfaction and area basement soul/house/swing producer OC Notes, now a working unit going by Black Power Arrangers, are a better Holigang than I ever dreamed possible.* They've just released "Christmas on the Moon," a micro-album available for free download here.

Seattle rap cognoscenti and blogosphere monitors have been knowing THEESatisfaction and OC Notes overlap in the realms of lo-fi sound and spaced-out musical viewpoint (see past team-up "Astronomical Warfare"). More recent news is the Black Power Arrangers' special love of good ol' fashioned Western holidays ("Icing" was the 206's number one Thanksgiving jam of 2009). Those who paid attention at the Go! Machine concerts at The Crocodile last month caught a foretelling of "Christmas on the Moon" when THEESatisfaction brought OC Notes on stage and performed "Jingle Bells," which sounded like two chipper aunts and a lovably drunk uncle futzing around the house during the chill-out hours of a holiday party. It's the first track on "Christmas on the Moon."

Elsewhere on the release, chestnuts roast over backdrafting Twilight Zone strings ("Open Fire") and ascending synth arpeggios from Missy Elliot's "Lose Control" are reworked for a song about using one's imagination (the title track). With its dated electro bounce, "Simply Crackin" recalls both contemporary "fresh beat" master James Pants—who OC Notes' other group Le'Roy played a concert with two weeks ago—and 1979-era Paul McCartney, perhaps borrowing a synth and certainly interpolating half a chorus from "Wonderful Christmas Time."

To me, the lyric of the album comes on "World Peace." Over a two-step muzak loop, THEESatisfaction's Catherine Harris-White declares "I'd like nappiness to be the new world hiphop trend." If her wish came true, if the trend in rap started to push toward unselfconscious naturalness instead of patriarchal copycatting, what a wonderful world this would be.

*UPDATE 12/23/09: I was originally remiss in not mentioning Ms. Harris-White's brother Charles (THEESatisfaction DJ Chocolate Chuck) is a Black Power Arranger. This blog post corrected me. It runs down significant images and aliases for everyone involved in the project.