music

Light In The Attic’s Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972 – 1986 spotlights the sonic development and diversity of a style that often feels reduced to an aesthetic or algorithmically-assisted curiosity. The album digs deeper into those sounds of bubble-era Japan. From the proto-City Pop funk to the crate-digger favorites Eri Ohno and Piper, the latest entry in Light In The Attic’s Japan Archival Series brings another set of sought-after tunes, most of which have never before been available outside of Japan.

This 7th volume contains seventeen Soul, Folk and Jazz nuggets from between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. One of the many highlights is the opening track by Marva Josie which is most likely one of the finest vocal jazz recordings ever put on wax. Is a fantastic weapon of seduction, a record for a silky evening, with a different vibe than the norm..

Pop music's volume knob adjusted for deflation in the early '70s, softness begat smoothness. Crewmen arrived from the worlds of jazz, folk, rock, and soul, all peddling a product that was sincere, leisurely, and lofty. A sound that was buoyant, crisp, defined.

A new two separate volumes of double-vinyl featuring a line-up of some of the most forward-thinking and progressive artists and producers working with electronic music around the world today.

Afro-Centric Jazz, Street Funk and the Roots of Rap in the Black Power Era 1969-75: ground-breaking African-American artists - The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Don Cherry, Funkadelic, Gil Scott-Heron and more - alongside a host of lesser-known artists all of whom in the early 1970s were exploring new Afro-Centric poly-rhythmical styles of music - radical jazz, street funk and proto-rap - while at the same time exploring the Black Power and civil-rights inspired notions of self-definition, self-respect and self-empowerment in their own lives.

‘Space Funk – Afro Futurist Electro Funk in Space 1976-84’, is an intergalactic journey into black space, fuelled by funk, powered by computers.‘Space Funk’ is a lovingly compiled collection of superb, rare and off-the-wall space funk and electro releases mostly released on small independent labels in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Brand new 3LP Set of electronic compilation on the Soundway Label. 50 electronic music producers and instrumentalists from Berlin, Bristol, Cairo, Johannesburg, Kiev, Lagos, Lisbon, Luanda, Nairobi, Naples were invited to collaborate in studios over the course of more than six months. As a result hip-hop from the squats of Naples, dubstep and bass from Bristol and Lisbon, experimental techno from Berlin and jazz-tinged deep-house from Kiev are thrust upon the pumping kuduro of Luanda, the free-thinking crackled electronica of Cairo, the afro-jazz of Lagos & Johnannesburg, and the Sheng street slang of Kenyan hip-hop and rap. A selection of the results of these cross-continental experiments can be heard on this record.

Through 18 diverse tracks, this compilation reveals how immigration from the Cape Verde Islands to Europe and the United States gave us an alternate history of the electronic music that dominated hearts and minds across the world in the late 1990s. But the story doesn’t start in a major Western cultural hub, rather in the small cluster of islands 400 miles off the Senegalese coast, and offers an unparalleled insight into the long-term cultural splendor catalyzed by migration. "As much a surprise and a perfectly paced seductive dance party." - NPR; "An homage to the music of migrants of Cape Verde" - VICE; "Easily one of the most intriguing and ear-opening records I've heard in a long time" - Errol Nazareth, CBC Radio (Canada)

They Say: “Driving brass and sax ensemble over funky rhythm section, playing tracks of various feel and style”.We say: From the Lincoln Continental that memorably adorns the cover to the tranquil funk contained within, this glowing ode to the grooving force of 70s American soul music is ice cool all over. With brilliant contributions from the Three Key Alans™ (Hawkshaw, Parker, Tew) as well as Mike Moran, Les Hurdle and Keith Roberts, this is driving music for only the vibiest cats.Originally released in 1976, The All American Powerhouse is one of the very best of the Themes library releases. It’s killer. A feast of dramatic jazz, horizontal, melodic funk and bouncing sunshine-y West-Coast feels throughout, there also lurks an intense injection of the Blaxploitation sound. Understandable, given the subject matter and year it was released.

The soundtrack to The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers' follow-up to their breakthrough film Fargo, is a quirky mixture of opera, world music, pop, jazz, exotica, folk and blues. In other words, it's as idiosyncratic as the Coens themselves, and the weird array of styles makes sense in practice, not on paper.