Recorded with producer Jeff Lane, the album weaves different influences, including Latin music and jazz, into the band's rhythmic funk style, and emphasises the group's brass section.

Originally a rock/R&B quartet under the leadership of Randy Muller, the group gradually expanded until they had become a nine-piece by 1972, with new members bringing influences of jazz and Latin music.

[3][4] In assignments on musical counterpoints, he used some of the arrangements he had written for the Brass Construction album, including that of "Changin'," which features "all these displacements where a phrase is shifted over a bar," as he described in an interview with Wax Poetics.

[6] Featuring extra vocals from sisters Delores, Bonnie and Denise Dunning,[7] "Movin'" emerged from a studio jam session that began with Wade Williamson's bass line, before Muller gave cues to other band members, notably drummer Larry Payton.

The jam lasted sixteen minutes, one entire side of tape, with Muller subsequently writing the horn parts and "Got myself together" hook, which were overdubbed.

As the record progresses, Payton's heavy drum work dominates over Joe Wong's "chanking guitars" and the pulsating off-time bass riffs of Wade Williamson, while the horns and chanting permeate.

[8] The album was ultimately released in autumn 1975,[8] and was advertised in the music press by United Artists with the tagline "New York Funk," saying "there's nobody who can ignore the power of the Construction.

"[1] Sue Byrom of Record Mirror & Disc felt that the album was "tight and fairly funky", but lamented that the tracks were similar, calling it "[s]olid disco music certainly but on this hearing not destined for much else.

[25] The group hoped to tour the UK in 1976 after the college terms of all nine members finished,[26] but ran into difficulties when making their applications for travel as Muller realised his mother did not register him as an American citizen when his family settled there from Guyana, fearing if he left the US he may not have been allowed to re-enter.

[33] The album has since become regarded as a landmark in funk music and proved influential,[3] particularly on the Britfunk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, with bands like Hi-Tension, Light of the World, Incognito and Level 42.

[3][7] The band's music, particularly "Movin'", also became popular at influential northern soul nightclub Blackpool Mecca in the late 1970s, where the introduction of jazz-funk helped bring a new audience.

[34] According to DJ Kev Roberts, "Movin'" was the song that "brought in a different level of person altogether", calling it "a funkier groove" and "a new tempo for people north of Watford to get into.

"[35] In Christgau's Record Guide (1981), Robert Christgau described Brass Construction as a "black-identified" disco band "with lots of funk" and said the album "owes more lyrically to Gil Scott-Heron than to Barry White but evokes both and is candid to the point of wryness (and terseness) about using words primarily for musical color," giving praise to "the way the synthesized violins are timed.

"[12] In a retrospective review, Craig Lytle of AllMusic made note of "the album's dance/funk appeal," describing the horn-centred music as being laden with vocals and sporadic socially aware lyrics.

[36] Daryl Easlea of BBC Music wrote that the "lyrically succinct and musically, monstrously funky" album startled the "soul community" in 1975, adding that the record's "mixture of driving rhythms and positive message showed there could be an alternative to disco that updated the work of Sly Stone and James Brown, while adding a new, urban flavour.