December Podcast - Best of 2017!

CMFCP December Podcast

Best of 2017!

The CMFCP December Podcast is an extended 90 minute episode in which we rattle through our favourite tracks of 2017! 

Tracks: 

The Black Madonna - His is The Voice I Hear (We Still Believe) 

Piero Umiliani - Discomania (Liuto) 

Zru Vogue - Do The Zru (Eskimo) 

Bonobo - Kerala (Ninja Tune) 

Lindstrom - Drift (Feedelity) 

Apostles - Banko Woman (Cultures of Soul) 

Elbertina 'Twinkie' Clark - Awake O Zion (Mr Bongo) 

Sampha - What Shouldn't I Be? (Young Turks) 

Jackson - Keep Swimming (Self-Release) 

Thundercat - Show Me The Way feat Michael McDonald & Kenny Loggins (Brainfeeder) 

Addison Groove - Changa (Self-Release) 

Alessandro Alessandroni - Afro Discoteca (Four Flies) 

Edith Peters - This Is The Moment (Rework by Gerard Frisina) (Schema) 

Com Truise - Idle Withdrawal (Ghostly International) 

Bicep - Glue (Ninja Tune) 

Todd Terje - Jungelknugen (Four Tet Remix) (Olsen Norway) 

Jamie 326 feat Masalo - Testify (Local Talk) 

*End of 'Best of 2017'* 

 New Releases spotlight: 

Ewan Hoozazmi feat Audible One - Freedom (Mr Bird Remix) (Particle Zoo) 

Tundra - The River (Particle Zoo) 

Jackson - Push Through EP

Jackson                                             

Push Through EP (Self-Released)          

If Stevie Wonder, Pharrel and Public Enemy were taken hostage by Sun-Ra, Mogwai and Mike Patten, forced to spend a decade devoid of outside contact in a Fritzl-esque cellar, and then forced to record an album, it would sound exactly like this. Exactly. Like. This. I fucking guarantee it.

Following on from assured sophomore release Time, Jackson deliver on their unquestionable promise with new record Push Through. 

Building on what is becoming a signature sound, the band, helmed by Jack Baldus, combine world-class musicianship with the kind of relentless creativity that can be as demanding as it is invigorating. Songs swerve violently, lurch and crash through their arrangements; yet every step is deliberate and meticulously performed. Influences and styles coalesce like battery hens, each one fracturing into a mix that defies categorisation; an amnesiac captivated by an unplaced reminiscence; something sinister; something sweet. Golden eggs indeed.

The band are led by songwriter, keyboard-wizard and lyricist Jack Baldus, whose increasingly impressive list of credits include work with Sure Thing. DJ Die, J. Morrison and Laid Blak. Joining him is regular vocalist O.Love, AKA 5 times DMC UK scratch champion DJ Asian Hawk, who combines sharp cuts, choice samples and impassioned vocal performances. This combo are the brains trust, behind which come the exceptional talents of a band of semi-regulars on session duty across drum, guitar, and brass instruments... including Gary Alesbrook on trumpet, he of Kasabian fame.

I could list the influences I hear in the record, but that would do a disservice to the composer, Jack Baldus. His uncompromising dedication to creating his own sound is clearly the driving force here. If you had to classify, you'd call this a jazz-funk-prog fusion record, akin to those the likes of Stanley Clarke gave to the 70s. Yet there's something Punk about the refusal to water down arrangements for modern audiences. 
I'll explain. Punk itself was a violent backlash against the proggy, jazzy sounds of the 70s that irked a generation of upstarts who wanted their music to stand for something, and saw the beardy prog bands as the preserve of a snobby upper-class. These days, music is most often delivered in soundbites; easily digestible simplicity set to a checklist of tired tropes. A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a song without the word 'tonight' in the chorus!

The received wisdom is this: Audiences are over-saturated, over-stimulated and under-educated. The steady dumbing-down of modern radio since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has had its desired* effect, and the audience clamours for More Of The Same.

Of course, that's not the whole story, and the internet has enabled the proliferation of new styles and sounds, but the audience has dwindled. Represses outsell new records on wax and Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift outsell everyone by a ratio of approximately 10000:1

There is simply no common-sense in a self-funded, self-employed professional musician with only a modest fanbase putting themselves through the agonies and ecstasies of creating a band, recording and gigging when it's one as wildly inventive and academic as Jackson. 

By railing against this received wisdom, Jackson's Push Through delivers a record that might just remind you why you fell in love with music in the first place. You deserve music with passion. You deserve music that aspires to be the best. You deserve songs that mean something to the writer. You deserve Push Through.

Here's a short teaser video

Buy Push Through Here: Bandcamp / iTunes

Also since Jackson isn't the most Google-friendly search term going, here are some links to connect on social media

WEBSITE – FACEBOOK – TWITTER – INSTAGRAM – SOUNDCLOUD

*That's a whole other story, but if you're interested in how the Telecommunications Act affected diversity in the musical landscape, I recommend this illuminating report

Manu Dibango - Electric Africa

Manu Dibango

Electric Africa

Tidal Waves Music

TWM10

Manu Dibango needs little introduction, born in Cameroon in 1933, Manu developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. He’s definitely among the best known African artists outside of Africa. Collaborations were numerous and include top acts like Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, Sly & Robbie, Don Cherry and Bernie Worrell. In addition to selling hundreds of thousands of copies of the albums he recorded, he played such huge venues as Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden.

In 1972, at 40 years of age, Manu Dibango did something almost unheard of for an African artist – he had a pop hit. His song “Soul Makossa” became an enormous hit which influenced popular music for decades to follow. First picked up by David Mancuso (The Loft), “Soul Makossa” took New York dance floors by storm & in July 1973 it became the first disco record to enter the Billboard Top 40—an early instance of Western pop experiencing a paradigm shift thanks to Africa. The song’s chant of “ma-mako ma-ma-sa mako-mako sa” echoes through the greatest-selling pop album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and it’s in the DNA of the music of Kanye West, Rihanna, A Tribe Called Quest, Akon and The Fugees.

By 1985, Dibango was back in Paris, one of the most successful African artists in the world, to start on the recordings for the Electric Africa album. This album hooked Manu and the Soul Makossa Gang up with New York avant garde producer Bill Laswell, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard player Bernie Worrell, Pan African synthesist Wally Badarou, New York guitarist Nicky Scopelitis, African drummer Aiyb Dieng and Malian kora virtuoso Mory Kante. This means of working gave Manu and Laswell license to fuse synthesizers and kora, talking drums and samples, ngoni and electric guitar. What it all boils down to is world beat in its truest sense.

Electric Africa remains one of Manu’s strongest albums. His deep growl of a honey and sandpaper voice and the energetic honk of his saxophone merge with the seamless samples and the myriad hand percussion and overt funkiness of his band. Herbie Hancock plays on three tracks, contributing an amazing electric piano solo on the title track and interacting with Manu’s sax while weaving to the warp of Mory Kante’s kora during “L’arbre a Palabres.” Similarly but more subtly, Laswell, Badarou and Worrell play dueling synthesizers in and around the band throughout ”Pata Piya.” All of this makes the album an hypnotic & upbeat Afro-Funk classic that will rock every part your body (and mind). Now finally back available as a limited vinyl edition for the first time since 1985.

Buy here: https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3536-electric-africa

Junior Byron - Trying To Hold On (CoS Reissue)

Very excited to present another fine Cultures of Soul release, this time the killer Junior Byron track "Trying To Hold On," written and produced by Wild Fire's Oliver Chapman and originally released on the Wild Fire label back in 1985. The A-side includes the original mix as well as the Version.

On the  B-side we've got the  epic "Megamix." The track was reworked by Gerd Janson, who created the mix old-school style with two copies of the record, a mixer, and an EFX box. Adding the final touches to this track is  mixing and mastering engineer LOPAZZ, who mastered many of the best techno tracks in the Get Physical catalog and released the seminal dance-classic "I Need Ya" on Output.  Pre-order for release on October 6th!

Here's a taste of the original cut

 

Pre-order here: https://culturesofsoul.com/collections/all/products/junior-byron-trying-to-hold-on-12

August Podcast!

August 2015 Podcast now up!
We're delighted to bring you our very first podcast! We dig into some very odd records and talk bollocks. What more could you want.
It'll be up on iTunes shortly, but for now you can hear it Mixcloud...

Tracklist

• Idris Muhammad - Soulful Drums
• La Batteria - Scenario
• Tullio de Piscopo - Drum Fantasy
• Dr Strangely Strange - Strangely Strange yet Oddly Normal
• Belle Epoque - Taste of Destruction
• The Night Terrors - Pavor Nocturnis
• Awolnation - Hollow Moon (Bad Wolf)
• Propagandhi - Haile Selasse Up Your Ass
• Powerglove - Blood Dragon Theme
• David Hasslehoff - True Survivor

Curious Music for Curious People - August 2015 Podcast by Curious Music 4 Curious People on Mixcloud