Ooh hello, soul jazz and fat drum breaks ahoy. Step forward Leeds-based The Lewis Express with new mini album The Lewis Express channelling the vibe of Ramsay Lewis and sometime Ramsay Lewis trio members Redd Holt and Eldee Young of Young Holt Trio/ Unlimited fame. As you can probably tell, they dig Ramsay Lewis a bit – alright – a lot
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Tag Archives: Jazz
THE LEWIS EXPRESS: The Lewis Express
VARIOUS: Esterno Notte Vol. 2/ Esterno Notte Jazz/ Esterno Giorno Estate
Library music fiends unite! Four Flies Records have capitalised on the success of their Esterno Notte and Esterno Giorno compilations of rare and unreleased 60s and 70s Italian cinema soundtrack material with three more volumes: Esterno Notte Vol. 2, Esterno Giorno Vol. 2 and Esterno Notte Jazz. Where the original volumes had dug from the RCA Italy vaults, the net is spread wider on
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JAZZPROFILACTIKA: Tick Tock (2017)
JazzProfilactika? Now there’s a name to conjure with. But let’s roll on instead to Tick Tock the new nine-track album from the Bulgarian four-piece who consist of a turntablist, a saxophonist, a trumpet and flugelhorn player and keys and French horn player and who started out as an alliance of like-minded djs nearly ten years ago. Along the way, the dj trio became a quintet
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MELVIN SPARKS: Live At Nectar’s (2017)
“My name is Melvin Sparks on the gui-tar!” Thus opens the first track, Miss Riverside, on Melvin Sparks: Live At Nectar’s to whoops and applause from the crowd. Melvin Sparks? Not ‘the’ Melvin Sparks? Melvin Sparks the rnb and soul jazz guitarist who used to back the likes of Dr Lonnie Smith, Jack McDuff and Charles Earland? Melvin Sparks whose soul-boogie cut If You Want My Love
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VARIOUS: Funky Chimes – Belgian Grooves From The 70s (2017)
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It shouldn’t be that surprising that Belgium managed to provide some super-dope funky grooves back in the day – it is after all the land that spawned the much-sampled Chakachas. What is surprising however, is how long this funky legacy has taken to be discovered or at least re-discovered. Happily, the SDBAN label’s Funky Chicken compilation from a few years ago certainly
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NUBIYAN TWIST: Dance Inna London feat. SUPACAT/ All The Pieces Ltd. 12″ (2017)
How do you manage to fit both tracks of a single, plus two remixes of each track plus the instros on vinyl? The answer, hipsters, is on a twelve inch – remember them? Nubiyan Twist certainly do as they re-work Supacat’s dubby 80s dancehall cut Dance Inna London in their own live-band, jazzy-reggae style with singer Nubiya Brandon effortlessly supplying new vocals and lyrics and
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RENE COSTY: Expectancy (2017)
Bet you haven’t heard of Rene Costy – music teacher, classical violinist, jazz musician and composer. The last point is what concerns us here since our man composed a ton of library music in the seventies from which period one track, Scrabble, was discovered in short order in the nineties by a number of significant breaks and hip-hop musicians and made it onto tracks such as
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BLACK FLOWER: Artifacts (2017)
You probably wouldn’t have thought the sound of Ethio-jazz would be alive and well in Belgium but then again, after everything that happened globally last year, surprising things might have lost the element of – well – surprise. And so it is that should you be looking for the spirits of Mulatu Astatke and Fela Kuti all mixed into the pot with some eastern scales, a bit of rock and dub and a
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AFTERNOONS IN STEREO: Echo Valley (2016)
Afternoons In Stereo takes a trip down jazz canyon on sixth LP Echo Valley which fuses multiple genres with, well, jazz, obviously. The title track (and opener) is a beatless Rhodes piano mood piece that swiftly gives way to the crisp breakbeat intro of City Of The Future and its jazz fusion vistas. Eames In Dub by contrast juxtaposes spacey echoes with jazz disco beats
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DALINDEO: Slavic Souls (2016)
“What’s not to like about a melancholic party song?” says Dalindeo band leader Valtteri Laurell Pöyhönen of the Finnish band’s new LP described in the PR Blah as a “Surf-Jazz-Tango-Extravaganza.” Ah the Finns and their melacholy. A mate persuaded me to go to the cinema once to watch a Finnish film. I forget the name of the director and the film now but I do remember that
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