El Michels Affair is the instrumental soul and funk project of New York multi-instrumentalist Leon Michels, co-founder of Truth & Soul and Big Crown Records, active since 2005. Enter the 37th Chamber (2009), his live-band Wu-Tang tribute, is the calling card; Yeti Season (2021) is just as rewarding. Shop El Michels Affair vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
El Michels Affair is led by Leon Michels, a New York-based saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who is also a member of the Daptone-adjacent contemporary soul scene. Michels has worked extensively with the Dap-Kings, Sharon Jones, Lee Fields, the Black Keys, Adele, Norah Jones, and many others as session musician and producer. He co-founded Truth & Soul Records (with Jeff Silverman) and later Big Crown Records (with Danny Akalepse). The El Michels Affair catalog has produced an extensive body of instrumental soul, funk, and hip-hop-adjacent work, including the highly regarded Wu-Tang tribute album Enter the 37th Chamber (2009).
El Michels Affair's sound combines soul, funk, instrumental hip hop, cinematic soul, and instrumental R&B with vintage analog production approaches, live instrumentation, and extensive integration with hip hop sampling traditions. Multiple releases have functioned as instrumental reinterpretations of classic hip hop catalogs (Wu-Tang, Rakim).
Truth & Soul, Big Crown, and Fat Beats pressings of the El Michels Affair catalog are widely collected in the contemporary soul, funk, and instrumental hip hop communities.
Listeners new to El Michels Affair typically start with Enter the 37th Chamber (2009) or Yeti Season (2021).
