UK

Editorial venture to France for ED025 with four expertly edited, blissful gems from Parisian producer, Chevals.The A side hits with two hazy cuts of sun drenched disco house. ‘Left Behind’ swells with filtered tales of lost love radiating a bittersweet warmth. Rich bass melodies and clipped funk guitars shine through as thoughts drift away across glistening seas. ‘Eye Of Love’ is served up next, equally as impassioned with buzzing synths, basking Spanish guitars and joy-filled chords and congas give a sense of desert islands where day-to-day life is only a figment of the imagination.Flip it over and ‘The Line’ hits with a pumped up, soulful bassline that solos and sidewinds with brazen hats as its accomplice. Squelching keys and deft Rhodes touches add luscious harmonies to leave listeners lulled by its masterful flow.Last up, ‘Time’ takes a pensive, eyes closed trip - delicate vocals, summery synth lines and glimmering samples washing away the worries as they wander over the airwaves.

Brothers in disco Moodena & Sartorial take the helm for the imprint’s sixth outing, packing another constellation of deep feeling, classy edits.It’s evident how musically informed the label-heads are, once again mastering the art of transmuting vintage US sound palettes into contemporary dance floor missiles for ‘Tropical Disco Edits Vol.6’.Opener, Sartorial’s ‘Just For You’ sets a colourful scene, bringing infectious bongos tickling from below. The breakdown is a righteous, hair-raising incline, eventually plummeting you into slinky vocals and extended strings that are as emotive as they are hedonistic.The game is in the name on ‘Sweet Music’, The bongos, kicks and shakers tracing out a clean, spacious groove. Nifty effects feature more than usual, bringing a raucous sense of energy to the track.Infamous party starter Moodena takes control on the flip with the records real highlight ‘Jupiter Rising’, a divine gospel of modern soul, penetrated with the artist’s signature emphatic drums. Piano and vocals conspire to elicit a bubbling sense of wide-eyed optimism, perfect for beating those autumnal blues.‘Boogie Monsta’ closes off the release, pitching it down a couple, Moodena conjures visions of a rodeo showdown at 3am in a bourbon-drenched Texan saloon.Don’t sleep, this series doesn’t just bang, it flies!

Another must have part of Marc Mac's "Beats n knowledge" series of mixtape style albums.A Documentary on Wax. Looking back (and forward), reflecting on the movement / organisation known as "The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Often the term "Self-Defense" is left out of discussion and far too often knowledge of the social programs developed by the Panthers gets push aside to continue a narrative of a violent group of anti-society revolutionaries. Revolutionary yes, anti-society no. All Power To The People.Produced by Marc Mac and pretty much all straight out of his MPC2500 (sampling sequencer), the 'college mixtape' style with sound bites from the era mixed with 90s style hip hop beats is now a trademark of this series. Limited to 300 copies worldwide. don't sleep.

Lance Ferguson's Raregroove Spectrum is a collection of newly recorded versions of classic funk, soul, jazz and latin vinyl rarities, which features some of Melbourne's finest musicians across the album, including past and present members of The Bamboos, The Putbacks and Hiatus Kaiyote.As the man at the helm of many musical projects over the years including Cookin' On 3 Burners, Menagerie & his solo project Lanu, Lance is no stranger to the art of imaginative musical re-interpretation, be the material soul, funk and jazz based or the works of James Blake, Roxy Music and Prefab Sprout.For Raregroove Spectrum, Lance explains that much of the inspiration for the re-works comes from his experience as a DJ; "Some of these versions can almost be looked at as DJ re-edits, sometimes we're extending what may be a really short track into something longer, or teasing out the elements in a song that really make it work on a dance-floor. It's essentially what someone does with a club re-edit, except we went the extra step and re-recorded the whole thing with a live band".In other cases, top-shelf classics have been re-imagined in different guises: James Mason's 'Sweet Power, Your Embrace' as a sun-drenched Samba, or Anderson Paak's sure shot tune 'Am I Wrong' given an 1980's style Boogie/Jazz Funk makeover. Stir into this musical gumbo stew the raw Deep Funk of 'Egg Roll', the swinging Mod R&B of Googie Rene's 'Smoky Joe's La La' to the epic, widescreen Jazz-Funk of Pleasure's 'Joyous' - Rare Groove Spectrum provides new perspectives on the obscure to the well-loved, from old-school to new sounds - this is rare grooves re-grooved... beautifully.

Re-issue of this rare & collectable mid-80s boogie/funk double-sider, music created by the group Cybotron, comes complete with pic sleeve.Fantasy Love Records established as a label in 2018 with a focus on the obscure and danceable sounds of the 80s. The point of the label is to revive the sounds of private/small pressings as well as unreleased tracks from groups who recorded boogie/steppers/disco via carefully illustrated vinyl releases & via digital for both collectors & DJs.

New Aussie label, Corella Records, run by producer/DJ Blind Tiger (formerly Captn K) is broadening the repertoire with a second release, a new indie disco 12" single, Forbidden Fruit.Forbidden Fruit - Field of Fruit Mix, is the one to check out. It's an indie dance/nu-disco excursion with driving bass and piano. Reverb slathered vocals from Steve Hensby and dreamy strings make this track an uplifting 8 minute journey.With a touch of early Chicago House in the piano stabs, Georgio Moroder in the rhythm, the drive of Underworld and repetitive elements reminiscent of Field.Forbidden Fruit - Original Mix, is serving up some classic disco with funky synth bass, driving drums and percussion and the full range of vocalist Steve Hensby makes this a great dance floor mover.Forbidden Fruit - Fruit Jam Mix, Blind Tiger delivers party jam vibes. Complete with electro drum machine, party goers and warped electric guitar from Luke Dux. It's a fun, stripped-back remix, that feels like the guys have stumbled on a vintage drum machine and a bunch of instruments at a house party and start cooking up a fruity jam.A little of something for everyone on this one, check it out.

First Word Records is very proud to present a brand new full-length album from Kaidi Tatham. 'It's A World Before You'.Following on from two EPs released on First Word last year ('Changing Times' and 'Hard Times'), Kaidi has delivered us thirteen tracks that deftly illustrate his various talents as a multi-instrumentalist.Kaidi is probably best known for his work with Bugz In The Attic, though his musical contributions over the years have also included Amy Winehouse, Slum Village, Mulatu Astatke, Soul II Soul, Moonchild, Leroy Burgess, Amp Fiddler, Chris Dave, Macy Gray, King Britt, DJ Spinna, Mr Scruff and IG Culture to name but a few! In recent times, he's worked with DJ Jazzy Jeff on a variety of projects, including his most recent album 'M3', touring Europe for Jeff and Will Smith's reunion shows, and on the PLAYlist album 'Chasing Goosebumps', with Glenn Lewis, Stro Elliot (The Roots), Masego, Maimouna Youssef, Rich Medina, Daniel Crawford and more.All this in addition to heating up dances around Europe with his inimitable DJ sets, and working heavily with First Word label-mate, Eric Lau (who also mixed this album) on a variety of projects, and adding releases to his already impressive catalogue on 2000 Black, Eglo and Theo Parrish's Sound Signature, with regular compadre, Dego (who features on the album's title track).This album personifies Kaidi's diverse palette of sounds – bar Eric & Dego's features, every piece of music is played by himself. Largely flowing on a broken beat rhythm section, Kaidi effortlessly incorporates washes of afro, latin and funk throughout. From the harmonics of 'Your Dream Don't Mean A Thing', to the breakneck funk of 'Outta Audah', each and every riddim exudes energy. But this isn't simply a bruk record. The album is laced together with downtempo beats and future jazz interludes throughout, and some sweet synth boogie is never very far away, especially on the weighty vibes of 'It's About Who You Know'. To top it all off, there's two delightful nuggets of hip hop soul - Mancunian label-mates, Children of Zeus, feature on the neo-soul vibes of 'Out Here On My Own', and there's a feature from Amir Townes, better known as Uhmeer - an upcoming MC from Philadelphia, and son of one Jazzy Jeff Townes - who rides a sub-heavy, piano-led slice of boom bap, voicing an assortment of characters to tell the tale of 'Cupid'.'It's A World Before You' is set to cause serious damage to sound-systems over the Summer, and show and prove once again the skills of one of the UK's best unsung musical talents, Kaidi Tatham.

The 45 of Everyday People - World full of people is well known on the modern soul and funk scene and it relatively easy to find a copy for maybe 500 pounds. What was always less well known was that there was also an LP by the same band but labels as People Pleasure. I first came across this LP in Turku, Finland in the early 2000s when at the house of DJ and Collector Felix Manell who pulled a pile of rare and interesting bits that day. I did not really appreciate the true rarity until trying to source my own copy. The next copy I saw was in Japan in 2004 but was not going anywhere. Roll on 15 years, Russell Paine, collector, DJ and super record researcher called me saying he had finally unravelled the mystery and was talking to Bill brown & Al Hall Jr. Russel sets himself the hard task of only putting out unreleased material on his own label so we also work together on LPs and Singles on Athens of the North. After we managed to clear the rights the final hurdle was finding a clean copy, not an easy task. After asking loads of deep collectors, Zaf put me onto DJ Nick the Record who very kindly lent me his minty personal copy, a huge favour considering how rare this record is, almost impossible to replace. So we mastered from the vinyl (no tapes exist) and while it still sound pretty raw it is twice as good as the O.G. Been a long time coming.

Eighties Ladies comprise Denie Corbett, Marva Hicks, Susan Beaubian, Sylvia Striplin and Vivian Prince. They recorded one album with Uno Melodic Records, a label created and run by the legendary Roy Ayers at the height of his career. The group are best known for “Turned On To You”, one of the most iconic ‘rare groove’ tracks from the early 80s. It was sampled numerous time in the 90s, most notably by A Tribe Called Quest (“Buttter-Hip Hop Mix”), and more recently bu Nujabes featuring C.L. smooth (“Sky Is Falling”). This 7” is an exclusive edit of the 12” version, while the instrumental version of “Ladies of The Eighties” appears here on 7” for the first time.