The country might have been at a virtual standstill for the last couple of months but that hasn’t stopped Original Gravity Records pushing ahead with the goodness in the form of 200-copy run of a new Regulators 45 Time Is Rocksteady Tight (Take 2) b/w Rocksteady Lockdown. Well – it’s not like time is tight, is it? As the track name implies, what you’ve got is a cover version of the much-
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Monthly Archives: May 2020
THE REGULATORS: Time Is Rocksteady Tight (Take 2) b/w Rocksteady Lockdown
SOULBRIGADA: Help / Love U Baby (RESENSE 048) (Vinyl 7″)
Rating: 
…and the second of two massive 45 booties from the Resense label today is a brace of superhot funky soul bangers from that man Soulbrigada. First up is Help – an extended, beat-heavy (but tastefully done) and very slightly sped-up rerub of a certain northern soul heater from Jackie Wilson that’ll have them helpless on the dancefloor. Big as that is however, it’s arguably
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RESENSE 047: Hip-Hop Control (LORD FUNK AND MOAR) / Do The Don’t Stop (GELATINE THUGS)(Vinyl 7″)
Rating: The first of two massive 45 booties today from one of the most discerning booty labels in the game is Resense 047 – a special DJ Oonops edition, no less – which finds the Brooklyn DJ pick out two dope cuts of uptempo funky hip-hop. On one side, Gelatine Thugs Do The Don’t Stop by cutting up brisk funk samples and Big Daddy Kane for the b-boys and girls. On the other
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SMOOVE & TURRELL: It Ain’t Working + Live video
It Ain’t Working is the third single to be lifted from Smoove & Turrell’s forthcoming new LP with the 80s after-shave referencing title of Stratos Bleu. What ain’t working though? Porter’s new parka? The new 80s-influenced boogie/ analogue electronica direction? Smoove’s maracas? Wash your mouth out! The title must surely be a reference to the properties of a certain legendary
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SMILE DAVIS: Let Me Get Down (ULURU 001)(Vinyl 7″)
Rating: If you’re thinking, ‘There’s been a lot of sunny weather lately, I could really handle a bouncing slice of uptempo reggae hip-hop,’ then Smile Davis has got you covered with Let Me Get Down. And you will be getting down. Smile Davis is, of course, another one of Woxow a.k.a. T.Melody’s musical identities and he’s lined you right up with a skanking party riddim topped-off
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EL MICHELS AFFAIR: Adult Themes
Following 2017’s excellent Return To The 37th Chamber and its set of Wu-Tang instrumental covers, El Michels Affair’s new LP, Adult Themes returns to the idea of all-original content. With a name like that, a cover featuring intertwined naked limbs and EMA’s debt to library music of the sixties and seventies, you might be expecting some sort of pastiche of 70s porn flick OSTs. And
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LEXSOUL DANCEMACHINE (feat. CORY WONG): Money
Estonian funk commandos Lexsoul Dancemachine find time to squeeze out one more single before the imminent release of third LP, Lexplosion II and it’s this one – Money. Ploughing an eighties funky furrow, the track makes the vaguest of hat-tips to Prince (among others) and somewhere after the bridge – about the time you’re thinking maybe the song is about to wrap
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FOLD: The Prize
Leeds band Fold follow Concrete Things with The Prize, the second single to be lifted from forthcoming LP Aphelion. The track departs from the band’s more usual template of ambient funky sounds accompanied by spoken word samples by adding a vocalist into the mix and it says here that the result falls somewhere between War and the jazzier side of Black Sabbath with shades of David
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GRAMOPHONE SOUL: Toxic Funk Vol. 2 (Vinyl 7″)
Breakbeat Paradise is currently running two 45 series and Toxic Funk Vol. 2 is the next instalment of one of them, on which this time (unlike Volume 1) both tracks are the work of just one man – Gramophone Soul. Sitting On The Bay Banger is essentially a re-build of the Beastie Boys’ Peggy Lee-sampling 2004 bomb, Ch-Check It Out with extra beats and little bit more Peggy
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DJAR ONE: Rescue Me b/w Bar-B-Q (Vinyl 7″)
45 soul edit/ re-works are bigger than ever right now and a man who always knows what’s good on that front is Le Havre’s Djar One who comes through with two biggies right here. First up is a Fontella Bass’s Rescue Me – an evergreen a peak-time party bump and now fully rebooted with a funky drum underpinning to give it that extra boost. On the flipside is another edit of Wendy
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