soul music
Album: Ibibio Sound Machine - ElectricityMonday, 28 March 2022
The fourth Ibibio Sound Machine album is produced by Hot Chip (who also contribute musically). However, fans will not hear a drastic step away from their last album, 2019’s Doko Mien. Instead, it has the feel of a logical progression, albeit with... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: All Turned On! Motown Instrumentals 1960-1972Sunday, 27 March 2022
Motown and its related labels have been heavily collected and meticulously scrutinised since the early Sixties. There ought to be nothing left to say. Yet here this is, a smart, 24-track collection of Motown instros which includes five previously... Read more... |
Album: Electribe 101 - Electribal SoulWednesday, 16 March 2022
There’s a period of British club music that deserves to be much better appreciated. Before hardcore and jungle, before the Underworlds and Leftfields and other arena acts, came a generation who were much closer to the most song-based US house music... Read more... |
Album: Mary J Blige - Good Morning GorgeousFriday, 11 February 2022
Mary J Blige is a monumental musical power. 30+ years, 14 albums, various labels and untold collaborations into her career, she still has the ability to deliver records that push everything else aside, existing entirely on their own terms and... Read more... |
Album: Maverick Sabre - Don't Forget to Look UpThursday, 27 January 2022
Michael Stafford aka Maverick Sabre is the definition of a modern journeyman vocalist. Since 2008 he’s released three albums and appeared on a huge range of British and Irish rap, dubstep and drum’n’bass artists’ records. He’s had several top 40... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds - Stormy Monday And The Eagles Fly On FridaySunday, 16 January 2022
TV-watching pop fans in many of the British regions were served a treat on 16 September 1966. A whole episode of Ready Steady Go! was dedicated to Otis Redding, who had arrived in the UK a week earlier on his 25th birthday.As would be expected... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2021: Sault - NineFriday, 31 December 2021
If ever there were a year to cherish new music, 2021 was it. Lockdown v3.0 came with unwelcome updates (shit weather, structured home-schooling) and the only end in sight was of the nation’s collective tether.With passports rendered next to useless... Read more... |
Album: Deep Throat Choir - In Order To Know YouWednesday, 01 December 2021
Although it’s indirect, the overall feel of In Order To Know You points to where jazz and soul meet – a space analogous to that occupied by The Rotary Connection, Seventies Curtis Mayfield, Neneh Cherry, the early Camille and the warmer end of... Read more... |
Jazz Voice, EFG London Jazz Festival review - from intimate delicacy to stunning virtuositySunday, 14 November 2021
A celebration of that most extraordinary instrument, the human voice, this year’s edition of Jazz Voice – which gladly welcomed back a live audience and a full-strength EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra – ranged from music of intimate delicacy to... Read more... |
Album: Katy B - Peace and OfferingsSaturday, 30 October 2021
“Flashbacks / driving in your car volume pushed right up to max / all those late nights I’d try to drink them back” These are almost the first words you hear on this record, coming in as South London Afrobeats producer P2J’s bass tones roll in on... Read more... |
Album: Nightmares On Wax - Shout Out! To Freedom...Saturday, 23 October 2021
George Evelyn is one of British music’s more interesting characters. With equal parts Yorkshire bluntness, hip hop swagger and cosmic dreams, he has filled Nightmares On Wax’s beat collages and soul grooves with soundsystem heft and endless... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Psychedelic Soul - Produced By Norman WhitfieldSunday, 10 October 2021
While there’s undoubtedly some of “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone” in Rare Earth’s “Come With me”, another correspondence also immediately springs to mind – the Melody Nelson-era Serge Gainsbourg. And maybe, due to the female moaning, the “Je T’Aime”-... Read more... |
