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Has it been a year already since Freestyle Records dropped the first Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club comp? Actually, it’s been slightly more than a year though the arrival of number 2 suggests a CC’s Funk & Soul Club release is all set to become an annual recorded music event as well as a good night out for all the family. Did I say all the family? I just meant those who dig the
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Monthly Archives: November 2013
VARIOUS ARTISTS: The Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club 2 (2013) Album release
MORLACK: Let’s Go Jammin’ EP (2013) + ‘Thunder Banger’ video
Let’s Go Jammin’ says Morlack. Oh go on then – where first? How about a funky breaks wobble through the early 80s – specifically a very Kool & The Gang corner of the early 80s. Oh la la la – let’s go dancing! Now then, if that didn’t get your back up off the wall, what about a pumping squelchy-bassed platform for the most unlikely rapappella to get used this year by a breaks producer? That’ll be
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THE REAL LIVE SHOW (feat. SADAT X): Grind (Freqnik & WDRE remix)(2013)
Rating: Ah – that’s the joint! NYC rappers The Real Live Show get former Brand Nubian Sadat X on the flex for the hook of new track Grind from the Grind EP. Nickodemus’s original beat is a faster, darker number displaying clear Eastern-influences but what you really want to be checking out is the remix from NY production crew Freqnik & WDRE. With this, our heroes rep the classic funky
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GOLDEN BROWN SOUND: ‘African Black Gold’ (2013) video + free download
Golden Brown Sound‘s African Black Gold is the second ganja anthem to drift, smoke-like, the monkey’s way this month and is about as raw as boom-bap gets. Rapper No Doz kicks raucous rhymes over Dj On & On’s fat beat which sounds like the arrival of Hannibal’s war elephant. MB favourite Will C has been employed to direct the video and adds to the weird by chopping up movie
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VARIOUS: Peru Maravilloso: Vintage Latin, Tropical & Cumbia (2013) + LOS ECOS ‘Me Siento Feliz’ free download
Rating: Blimey! Carnibal Records, Andy Taylor, Skeewiff, Abtomic, Moar and all those types will be so excited when they hear about this they’ll need an adrenaline poo. Allow me to explain: Peru Maravilloso: Vintage Latin, Tropical & Cumbia is a fifteen track compilation consisting of tracks of vintage cumbia, guaracha and chicha Peruvian grooves which (and here’s the thing) have been
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AFRIKA BAMBATAA feat. GRANDMASTER FLASH, MELLE MEL & KURTIS BLOW: We Funk This Party Out (Qdup & AGFA Remix) (2013) Free download
Having all your favourite first wave of NY hip-hop emcees together on one record holding forth about the ‘pioneers’ and how ‘everyone dances when they hear the funk drop’ would sound a lot more convincing were it not happening over a nineties house beat. Someone should really do something about that. Oh wait…they have. Step forward Qdup and the All Good Funk Alliance who bring the
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GHETTO FUNK presents: TONIC feat. RAYNA ‘The Pump’ (GFD07) (2013)
Not enough ghetto funk in your life? That’s all set to change this week as the (now Bristol-based) Ghetto Funk label drops The Pump (courtesy of Perth’s Tonic) thus administering the very – er – tonic you need. And it’s a bit of a ‘pump n grinder,’ in fact as relentless synths battle bumpin breaks and – hello – who’s this? Why, it’s Rayna everybody (a.k.a. MC Rayna a.k.a. Rayna Zara) one
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DEM ATLAS: Charle Brwn EP (2013) Free download
In these days of declining sales in recorded music, with myriad ways of circumnavigating actually paying for digital music (editing a music blog for example) and the rise of the internet leading to a proliferation of rappers making and marketing their own music, record companies like Rhymesayers need to really hear something in an aspiring artist’s music. In the case of Dem Atlas that seems to be
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EPHEMERALS: Nothin Is Easy (2013) Free download
Rating: Nothing is easy these days it seems – including releasing a record and making money out of it. In fact the very notion of making money out of popular recorded music appears to have become what you might call – ephemeral. Which goes some way to explaining why lushly orchestrated retro soul of this quality, rich in analogue warmth and boasting a singer with
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VOODOOCUTS: Chop In To Love (2013) Free download
Rating: Oohhh – now that is dirt! Filthy wah-wah, reverbed claps and a chugging seventies funk groove to die for – not to mention the tag team of soul sister vocals encouraging the listener to “Taste my lovin” and a bass-voiced soul brother interpolating with such observations as, “Hot damn!” and “Take a lunge – take a plunge”. It’s an edit of course from his rework majesty
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