Funk
See: Blood Wine or Honey feat. Zoe Brewster – ‘Testing Time’: popping with colour, welcome this hypno-Afro-tropicalia funk into your world
THEY call their particular thang hypno-tropicalia, and it certainly is that; and whoah! so much more. Much more. They paint their irresistible, off-the-wall, deliciously weird groove styles in the brightest colours, and it’s kinda, hmmm, hypno-Afro-tropicalia-jazz-funk-disco, strongly declamatory, punk-funk-jazz, all the compounds and inversions of that. It’s out there on an underlit dancefloor in the …
Track: The Allergies feat. Dynamite MC – ‘Lean On You’: reach out to each other and glory in some quickfire fun
THANK the good lord for the fun. The Allergies kept us keeping on through the trials and tribulations of last year with so many great single drops – “Get Yourself Some” and “I’m On It”, “Just Got That Feeling”, more – and a party-vibe fourth album, Say The Word, which helped a lot, brought the …
Album review: Nubiyan Twist – ‘Freedom Fables’: the sound of the summer we deserve
WHEN all of this (gestures expansively at the pandemic) is over we’re going to want live music. We’re going to need live music. Hell, we’re going to deserve live music. Freedom Fables, Nubiyan Twist’s follow up to their acclaimed Jungle Run from spring 2019, on Strut Records, feels like the gig we need; the gig …
EP review: Toronto’s The Luvmenauts release electro-jazz delight, ‘Extravehicular Activity’
Shapeshifting, genre defying and pleasantly eclectic; a true transcendental journey into space
Album review: El Michels Affair -‘Yeti Season’: Big Crown kingpin proves he’s a 10th dan at soundtrack funk magic
Yeti Season? Pretty stunning. Leon is a soundtrack music 10th dan; an absolute master of the craft. Slip Yeti Season onto the decks, you have the most diverse, exciting, retro-soundtrack waiting there for you; there maybe no one better at this kind of the thing in the world right now. One moment R.D. Burman with Piya his Lata Mangeshkar, another Lalo Schifrin, another Piero Piccioni; all are here, ten short films in themselves, these tracks, scenes from a film so ace you have to make it. In your head. Pick yourself up Adult Themes, grab a giant bucket of popcorn, make it a double bill. Absurdly brilliant. Buy.
See: The video for the slow, surreal funk jam of RAS’ ‘Lo Zaz’; an album follows in May
HAILING from Tel Aviv but these days based in Berlin, RAS are bringing their own brightly eastern Mediterranean twist on classic Seventies’ funk and soul, mixing slow jams with influences from Greek, Turkish and Arabic music for a heady and sometimes psychedelic brew. Multi-instrumentalists and producers Dekel Adin and Eden Leshem come replete with vintage …
Track: Gizelle Smith – ‘King Of The Mountain’: Mighty Mocambos soul queen takes Kate Bush into orbit
GIZELLE SMITH, the glorious voice of deep funk freestylers The Mighty Mocambos, alumnus of WahWah 45s, Big Crown and other rather fine labels that should tell you everything you need to know as a trademark of quality, is all set to release her debut solo album for Brighton’s Jalapeno Records later on in the year. …
Track: The Drive – ‘Can You Feel It?’: South African sunshine funk nugget reissued
CANADIAN label We Are Busy Bodies has unearthed a proper dose of jazz-funk sunshine, South African outfit The Drive’s 1975 set Can You Feel It?; and the label has dropped the title track from that set to tempt you out into the rays for the full album repress. It’s a loose groove, big on the …
NEWS: Matthew E. White and Lonnie Holley announce avant-garde folk album; hear ‘This Here Jungle of Moderness/Composition 14’
THEY may at first somewhat unlikely bedfellows: Matthew E. White, who arrived back in 2011 with his debut album The Big Inner, seemingly a fully formed gentleman of classic Southern Americana; and Lonnie Holley, the scrap sculptor who released his debut set of free-flowing outsider funk, Just Before Music, at the age of 62 in 2012. …
Track: Barley Passable bottle the essence of a Sydney summer with new single Turnaround
Sydney duo, Barley Passable, have released a veritable slice of summer with their new slinky, sensuous single ‘Turnaround’. It is as if they have bottled the essence of Sydney’s northern beaches – the bleach white beaches, the cloudless blue skies and the driving searing heat, hooning around in panel vans and board shorts eating Chiko …