Ah – Hollie Cook – always a pleasure – especially since she has a new single out entitled Angel Fire. All the elements of a classic Cook reggae cut are there, the butter-wouldn’t melt vocals and a classy reggae beat with pop savvy. It’s what she once referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as ‘tropical pop’ in fact. A term which has no doubt haunted her ever since, like the ghost of Amazulu, bandied around
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HOLLIE COOK: Angel Fire (2017)
JAYL FUNK feat. TARZAN BROS: Funkin’ Your Soul (2017)
Jayl Funk and Tarzan Bros. channel late 70s Bronx vibes on their latest collaboration Funkin’ Your Soul. Out on Jayl Funk’s very own Honkey Phonk label, this drop is all about the super disco-breakin’ vibes, positively dripping with retro-synth bass and funky geetar while Tarzan Bros. grace the mic in a firmly Sugarhill stylee. Let’s put it this way – Sylvia Robinson would have released it. Can
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THE BOMBAY ROYALE: I Love You Love You (2015)
To misquote MC Coppa from all the way back in 2010, The Bombay Royale are a band with Bollywood plans and (no doubt) Bollywood fans who do weird dancing with their hands. And if they were all about the sixties sitar funk on first LP (2012’s You Me Bullets Love) seem now to be heading in a New Wave-influenced musical direction with the first single taken from
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BAZZA RANKS meets JAGO & DEEMAS J: Riddim Riders EP (2017) Video
Remember when Jamaican dancehall became obsessed with boom-bap beats? To be fair, it was around the time when everyone was obsessed with boom-bap beats which is to say the 90s – a sound and era celebrated in three-tracker the Riddim Riders EP from Dirty Dubsters’ Bazza Ranks and Tru Thoughts vocalists Jago and Deemas J. Oohh – does that mean three helpings of rapid-fire patois
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PERCEPTIONISTS (MR LIF & AKROBATIK): Dirty Drumz (2017)
Bloody hell, behave yourselves, Mr Lif and Akrobatik are back already with the second single, Dirty Drumz, off their first LP in twelve years – Resolution. What’s that Lif? “All the world wants is some dirty-ass drums”? Well that explains the minimal beat with doom-laden John Carpenter-esque synths and the distortion on kick and snare then. What else? “All the world wants is some
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THE ALLERGIES: Entitled To That 7″ (2017)
Rating: 
Entitled To That eh? And precisely what could The Allergies be entitled to as a consequence of their massive new single co-penned with Ugly Duckling emcee Andy Cooper in a neo-northern soul stylee? And by ‘massive new single’, I mean a banging horns-led stomp, weighing in with a classic 146 bpm tempo and featuring the supremely capable Honey Larochelle
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SOOPASOUL: Pushin’ Weight b/w Brand New 7″ (2017)
Fresh from the hot-cakes-level success of his massive recent triple run of Soopasoul Edits (his first releases of any kind in seven years), DJ Soopasoul appears to have decided that the time is ripe for something original too. Enter his forthcoming Pushin’ Weight 7″ – a title that suggests a celebration of narcotics distribution perhaps? Well, blaxploitation flicks
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DJ PNUTZ: 16 Psyche (2017) + video
Rating: It’s widely known that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. What’s less well-known however is that if you pay Pnutz, you get beats and plenty of them – although, frankly, DJ Pnutz is such a beat junky she’d be making them anyway, money or no. And how do we know this? We know this because barely a year after releasing the nineteen track Good Wife’s Guide To Beatmaking
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SHAKA LOVES YOU: Summer Sessions Vol. 3 Day & Night (2017) Free download
Forget Wimbledon, it wouldn’t be summer without the Shaka Loves You summer mix which this year is entitled the Summer Sessions Vol. 3 Day & Night. Is it called that because the boys are at it twenty-four seven? Possibly, if you mean being behind the wheels of steel, for this celebrates the multitude of sets they play – both in the day (represented by funk, soul, hip-hop and reggae)
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ERIC BOSS: Closer To The Spirit 7″ (2017) + video
Rating: Eric Boss (a.k.a E from Stones Throw’s Myron & E) makes his bid for single of the year with stone-classic, b-boy funk 45 Closer To The Spirit and in doing so demonstrates the aptness of his name. Remember the tremors in the funk community and beyond when Mocambo dropped Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band’s P.I.M.P? Well – they’ve done it again. And if we learn one
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