It’s not the first time it’s been done, even for De La Soul and even by DJ Platurn himself (So This Is De La Heaven Pt.1 came out eleven years ago) but tracking down the samples used by a hip-hop band and creating a mix with them has rarely sounded as good as this. You could say that Platurn runs rings around his rivals. The rings of Platurn, if you will. Thank you, I’m here all week. If you need
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DJ PLATURN: So This Is De La Heaven Pt. 2 (2014)
LAURA VANE & THE VIPERTONES: Pictures (2014) + video
Newness from Anglo-Dutch contemporary funk act Laura Vane & The Vipertones comes in the form of lead single Pictures from forthcoming LP Bodyquake. In it, Vane largely dispenses with limited conventional notions of rhyming lyrics and literally sings an account of what she’s done in the last couple of days. She drew a picture of you. She drew a picture of herself. She drew a mountain
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DUSTY TONEZ: Life’s A Groove (2014)
I don’t know about you but my life’s a grind at the moment, things ain’t so for one of the Irish bass n breaks massive’s prime movers though. No – life’s a bloody groove for Dusty Tonez, it seems. Enter perhaps his most accomplished work to date – the Life’s A Groove EP, consisting of four pumping bass grooves in ghetto g-funk flavour (Fear – which airs a 2Pac and Outlawz ‘pella), ghetto reggae flavour
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BASEMENT FREAKS: I Feel Good With This Hip-Hop (James Brown vs. Dead Prez) (2014) Free download
Is it me or has it been a while since Basement Freaks dropped a booty mash? Anyway, here’s I Feel Good With This Hip Hop as he blends the dead Godfather of Soul with the living Dead Prez. That’ll be Dead Prez’s Hip Hop ‘pella mashed with a loop from and occasionally other snatches of I Feel Good then. Unusually (for the ghetto funk era), the temptation to whack a by-the-numbers synthetic
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MR BENN feat. EVA LAZARUS, BLACKOUT JA & CHAMPIAN: Stars (2014)
Rating: 
Mr Benn cannily returns with the sunshine and three sunshine-drenched covers of Cornell Campbell’s Stars which will appear as a special 7″ double pack from the Nice Up! Records crew. Eva Lazarus delivers a super sweet female vocal take on the original lyrics, Blackout JA appropriates Mr Benn’s version of the riddim in order to call out corruption (in politics, education
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SLYNK feat. TIMOTHY WISDOM: Flip It Up (2014)
Clearly not a man who feels he’s released enough big free downloads in the last month, Slynk drops yet another one. It’s not an edit this time though but some original funky disco breakin and he’s joined on it by Timothy Wisdom.
“Not Timothy Wisdom ‘the ghetto funk MacGyver: you name it, he can do it?’”
“Yep – the very same.”
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JIGGYJOE: Shake It EP (2014)
JiggyJoe reprises the sort of ‘ghetto latin’ that formed the backbone of Skeewiff‘s rather good Ghetto Latin & Broken Ballroom LP from the autumn with co-production from – well – Mr Skeewiff himself. And what do you know – it’s a sound that continues to please. Then Ursula 1000‘s on a remix tip inna 80s Bronx electro stylee which has the bizarre effect of making Claire G
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EURO CINEMA: Funkstamatic (2014)
If their Blue Note-centric debut album Ten-4 was a single screen movie house, Euro Cinema‘s hammond funk-rock/ New Orleans funk/ lounge/ neo-soul/ jazz-funk follow up Funkstamatic is more of your multiplex type affair. Mind you if you caught any of the procession of singles and leaked tracks in the two year run-up to this drop – you could tell it wasn’t going to all be west coast jazz funk again
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SMOOVE: Slow Down (B-boy Instrumental remix)(2014)
A third Smoove & Turrell album is on the way, a single is due before that (for both of which, check back with the Monkey soon) and before that, Smoove keeps the funk-soul massive’s enthusiasm for all things S&T-flavoured well fluffed by favouring us with this b-boy instrumental. I feel like I should know that sample though – something classic and soully – what is it? It’s on the tip of my mind but I
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SPEEDOMETER: Happy (2014) + DJ Snatch ‘Pharrell vocal’ edit
Speedometer engage in the time-honoured practice of doing a genre cover of a pop standard here. In this case they take hipster-prince Pharrell’s happy-clappy stomp – er – Happy and render it as a soul jazz instro pitched somewhere between S.O.U.L.’s Burning Spear and Smash Mouth’s Walking On The Sun. Which as it turns out isn’t that bad a place. Hmm – an instro though – if only
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