Tuesday 29 August 2017

Antonio Adolfo - Viralata (Reissue)

Antonio Adolfo                                                       

Viralata [1979] (Mr Bongo)                         


A seriously tasty Brazilian classic lovingly repressed by Mr Bongo. Fans of Deodato, Roy Ayers and decent Bossa Nova will love it.
Far Out reissue of this all-time classic from Antonio Adolfo. An essential Brazilian LP touching on jazz, soul, fusion and Samba. The opening track 'Cascavel', is a song that we have hammered over the years – a 'London Jazz Classic' and a favourite from Saturday night sessions at Plastic People.


SIDE A – 1.Cascavel / 2. Paraiba Do Sul / 3. Brincadeira Em Ré / 4. Brincadeira Em Mi Bemol / 5. Caminhada / 6. Vermelhinho // SIDE B – 1. Nordeste / 2. Alegria De Carnaval / 3. Diana E Paulo / 4. Vira-lata / 5. Assanhada / 6. A Marcha 

Sunday 27 August 2017

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


An overdue word on Stepisodes

Stepasaur                                           
Stepisode 14                                        

Stepisodes 14 just dropped, and for those who know that means another wryly hilarious rhyme-fest set to a revisionist video from the one and only Stepasaur.
For those who don't, Stepasaur is none other than Gee Ealey, he of Stepchild/Malachai fame, armed with his ridiculously high quality rap skills, some hilariously average impressions and an appetite for flipping 70s and 80s TV staples on their heads.

It's embarrassing for us that we've not blogged Stepisodes before, since they more than comfortably fit the CMFCP brief.

Please accept my apologies and whip out your viewing spectacles... let's start at episode 14, since it contains a topical tribute to the late Bruce Forsyth, starring in 'The Bru-Tang Clan'




And here's the whole collection for when you're done


If you want to own any of the tracks you can grab them from the Stepasaur Bandcamp page https://stepasaur.bandcamp.com/

Saturday 26 August 2017

V/A The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986




The follow up to Light In The Attic’s game-changing I Am The Center box set is finally here. The Microcosm: Visionary Music Of Continental Europe, 1970-1986 is the first major overview of key works from cosmically-taped in artists needing little introduction — Vangelis, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popol Vuh — and unknown masterpieces by criminally overlooked heroes like Bernard Xolotl, Robert Julian Horky and Enno Velthuys.

Whereas I Am The Center called for a reconsideration of an entire maligned genre, The Microcosm requests nothing more than an open mind to consider this ambient, new age, neuzeit, prog, krautrock, cosmic, holistic stuff, whatever one calls it — as a pulsating movement unto itself, a mirror refracting the American new age scene in unexpected, electrifying ways, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the universality of the timeless quest to express “the Ineffable” through music.

Drawing from major label budgets and homemade cassette distributed circumstances alike, The Microcosm demonstrates a depth of peace profound to behold, and clearly expands the boundaries. Lovingly conceived and lavishly presented by producer Douglas Mcgowan (Yoga Records) and liner notes contributor Jason Patrick Woodbury (Pitchfork, Aquarium Drunkard), The Microcosm features stunning cover paintings by Étienne Trouvelot, and labels by Finnish savant Aleksanda Ionowa.



Listen to some choices excerpts from the record below


And buy here https://lightintheattic.net/releases/2637-the-microcosm-visionary-music-of-continental-europe-1970-1986

Manu Dibango - Electric Africa


Manu Dibango

Electric Africa

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.


Hiroshi Yoshimura - Music for Nine Post Cards (1982)


Hiroshi Yoshimura

Music for Nine Post Cards

EOS01LP
Lovely vinyl repress of 1982's ambient masterpiece

Despite his status as a key figure in the history of Japanese ambient music, Hiroshi Yoshimura remains tragically under-known outside of his home country. Empire of Signs – a new imprint co-helmed by Maxwell August Croy, Spencer Doran and distributed by Light In The Attic – is proud to reissue Yoshimura’s debut Music for Nine Post Cards for the first time outside Japan in collaboration with Hiroshi’s widow Yoko Yoshimura, with more reissues of Hiroshi’s works to follow in the future.
Working initially as a conceptual artist, the musical side of Yoshimura’s artistic practice came to prominence in the post-Fluxus scene of late 1970s Tokyo alongside Akio Suzuki and Takehisa Kosugi, taking many subsequent turns within Japan’s bubble economy afterward. His sound works took on many forms – commissioned fashion runway scores, soundtracking perfume, soundscapes for pre-fab houses, train station sound design – all existing not as side work but as logical extensions of his philosophy of sound. His work strived for serenity as an ideal, and this approach can be felt strongly on Music for Nine Post Cards.
Home recorded on a minimal setup of keyboard and Fender Rhodes, Music for Nine Post Cards was Yoshimura’s first concrete collection of music, initially a demo recording given to the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art to be played within the building’s architecture. This was not background music in the prior Japanese “BGM” sense of the word, but “environmental music”, the literal translation of the Japanese term kankyō ongaku [環境音楽] given to Brian Eno’s “ambient” music when it arrived in late 70’s Japan. Yoshimura, along with his musical co-traveler Satoshi Ashikawa, searched for a new dialog between sound and space: music not as an external absolute, but as something that interlocks with a physical environment and shifts the listener’s experience within it. Erik Satie’s furniture music, R. Murray Schafer’s concept of the soundscape and Eno’s ambience all greatly informed their work, but the specific form of tranquil stasis presented on releases like Nine Post Cards is still difficult to place within a specific tradition, remaining elusive and idiosyncratic despite the economy of its construction. This record offers the perfect introduction to Hiroshi’s unique and beautiful worldview: it’s one that can be listened to – and lived in – endlessly.

Buy here: https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3538-music-for-nine-post-cards




Friday 25 August 2017

The Allergies - Push On

The Allergies' debut album introduced the world to the way they effortlessly fuse funk, soul, disco, hip-hop and breaks into dancefloor-ready nuggets of ear candy. Taking classic sounds and reshaping for the modern age is the signature that won them plaudits across the globe. 

Not ones to rest on their laurels, it hasn't taken long for them to deliver more of the goods on their second full-length album, 'Push On'. As well as taking the successful formula of the first record and expanding on the sound with raw Funk, Psych, Northern Soul, and Boogie influences, The Allergies enlisted two giants of underground Hip-Hop to bless mics on the album as well. 

After a hugely successful collaboration on their debut LP, once again the dynamic lyricism and production skills of the inimitable Andy Cooper (Ugly Duckling) are present and correct in this new collection. Besides bringing the party on tracks like 'Main Event', he also settles scores with 'It Won't Be Me', before destroying all-comers on the battle Rap behemoth, 'Buzzsaw'. Also joining in on the action is UK MC veteran, Dr Syntax (The Mouse Outfit, Foreign Beggars) who prescribes some more healthy Hip-Hop advice on the track 'Remedy'.

Other highlights include the vintage Soul stomper, 'Entitled to That', Sixties uptempo groover, 'Hold You Close', and the fantastic little strutter, 'Get Down On You'. All in all it's a brand new set of future classics from your new favourite funky beatmakers, The Allergies.

Get it below

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
 

The Eminent Stars - Bar Shift


Release date: 1 September 2017

Genre: Funk / Soul / R&B
Label: Tramp Records
Format(s): 7" EP / Digital
Cat #: TR1043




The Eminent Stars were founded by saxophonist Ben Mendes and drummer Toon Oomen. They both share the love for the great music emerging from cities like New Orleans in the ‘60s and ‘70s: Dr. John, Freddie KingThe Meters and many more! Just mix up some soul, rhythm & blues, funk and blues and there you have it: a sound that consists of authentic elements: danceable, intriguing, vibrant and fresh!

Their debut Sittin' In With was released in February 2014, accompanied by a single. In the past three years The Eminent Stars heavily toured in their home country Netherlands and in Europe. They kept writing new songs and here we go with two new, fresh cuts. “Bar Shift” features guest vocalist Bruce James while “Brown Thang” is a smokin' blues-funk instrumental. These two sides give you an excellent foretaste of their second full-length album, scheduled for release in early 2018.

Check out this awesome live performance on video 

 

Pre-order now available from the Tramp Bandcamp store
https://tramprecords.bandcamp.com/album/pre-order-bar-shift-b-w-brown-thang

Aleem - Hooked on Your Love (Don Dayglow Edit)

DD back once again with another slice of hands-in-the-air Disco goodness... this time he's re-worked Aleem's classic featuring Calibur, Leroy Burgess and a young Luther Vandross.

Free Download from the link below