Back catalogue: All genres

Review: This red hot double sided 7" 'It's Time For Love' / 'The Arabian Sound Of Reggae' is a classic joint from 1975. Japan's Dub Store has licensed a reissue here that makes it affordable again to all. Bobby Ellis & Val Bennett Mazuies join forces first up on 'The Arabian Sound Of Reggae' make for a nice roots roller with hypnotic melodies layered up over the earthy drums. On the flip is Owen Grey's 'It's Time For Love' which is another gem. Both tunes were produced by Bunny Lee and bring that timeless roots sound.

Review: 'Girassol' has long been one of the hardest-to-find gems in Brazilian great Marcos Valle's vast catalogue of sun-drenched musical treats. It was initially recorded and released as a promo-only seven-inch, with copies being handed out to customers of a Brazilian supermarket chain. This, then, marks the track's first ever commercial release. In its' original form (side A), 'Girassol' is a lusciously short, soft-focus affair - a two-minute chunk of laidback, jazz-funk influenced South American boogie bliss with the kind of high production values that you'd expect from Valle during his successful post-disco period. As with the original 7", it comes backed with the slightly more elaborate 'Playback' instrumental mix, where gentle, eyes-closed saxophone solos come to the fore.

Review: Although he's been releasing music since the tail end of the noughties, it's a while since vinyl lovers got the chance to hear fresh material from Trevor Vichas. This surprise 12" for the fast-rising Purveyor Underground Ltd label is therefore a welcome surprise. On title track 'Miss Nice' Vichas wraps jazzy guitar, keys and vocal samples around a chunky, loopy, filter-sporting deep house groove. Demarkus Lewis successfully takes the track up a notch or two on his accompanying remix, before Vichas doffs a cap to the jazz-fired Chicago boompty sounds of Greens Keepers and Mike Dixon on 'Monday Jazz'. The Come Connect mix of that track, which rounds off the EP, is a pleasingly bumpy, bass-heavy and energetic revision that's crying out for peak-time plays.

Review: The world seems to be rapidly splitting in two again, or perhaps separating into 200 or so pieces, division driven by simple minds. So Vision's Checkpoint Charlie is certainly a release for our times. After just two decades in which planet and people at least pretended to be actively striving to unite, the rhetoric of nationalism, distrust, and imperialistic ambitions has returned to the main stage.

At times like this, what do you need? How about a huge synth pop anthem that sounds like it was created in the latter stages of the Cold War, boasting lyrics like "Don't fight love now", an apocalyptic air to the melodic refrains, and these huge, punchy drum beats? Instantly impactful, if the music industry was as it used to be when Checkpoint Charlie was in operation as one of the few places to legally cross from East to West Berlin, this would likely be the week's highest new Top 40 entry.

Review: A world of brutal beats and hard edge techno rhythms beckons on this new min album, vocals often obstructed by brushing synths and comprised textural sounds, tortured leads and fizzing apocalyptic energies that make it perfect for gritty warehouse raves. Opener 'The Brain Plays With Me' sets a powerful tone from the off, while 'Claroscuro' slips into a slower but just as caustic world of sound. 'Don't Trust In The First Whispers' is a paranoid chamber of reflected vocals and crashing hits that has you looking over your shoulder and 'Melted Doubts' is doom laden drone from the end of the world.

Review: Comes courtesy of producer and edit maestro Alkalino. The Germany based selector dug deep into his vaults of hard and electro to deliver some of the best sleeper and classic gems.The highlight of side one is easily Breakin' Wind, with other notable bangers such as Bang on it, Stardance and Fly with the wind. One thing about Adeen Records and the Make-Up series is they deliver every time.

Review: DJ, curator and producer Dave Lee (fka. Joey Negro) continues to celebrate his 30-odd year long career in music with his second curatorital comp release. The 'Produced With Love' series charts all of Lee's original productions in soulful house and disco, and this second edition includes choices songs by the likes of Destiny II, Leroy Burgess and Andreya Triana. Always collaborative and with effortless attention to funking detail, Lee brings it once again.

Review: There is a wealth of talent on show on the third EP from the Fusion Sequence label which has put together this six-track deep house sizzler. The Variable Club' 'Biorhythms' is perfectly warm and dynamic for cosy backroom moments and Alpine DJ then brings an old school piano feel to 'Pepe Nony' before A Vision Of Panorama zones you out on lush chords and reverential keys on 'Kissing The Sun.' The flipside offers the more dark and heads-down 'Many Stories' while the blissed-out and feel-good grooves return with Common Mode's 'Bassface.' Body Corp shuts down with the slower, seductive sounds of 'Take It Or Leave It' which rounds out a top-class EP.

Review: Despite the style's influence and enduring legacy, shoegaze has not been celebrated with a raft of compilations and retrospectives. Waves of Distortion attempts to set the record straight via two discs of classic (and occasionally overlooked) shoegaze gems recorded and released at different points between 1990 and 2022. It offers a neat overview of the sound and some its greatest practitioners, flitting between the glistening, reverb-laden dream pop of Slowdive, the bowl cut-sporting loved-up swagger of Ride, the densely layered country-shoegaze haziness of Telescope, the jaunty jangly-ness of AR Kane and Spirea X, the psychedelic heaviness of Ringo Deathstarr, the tactile bliss of Beach House and the slow-burn, post-rock majesty of Mogwai.

Review: By now, we should all know what to expect from the popular Too Slow To Disco series, namely glassy-eyed, pitched-down disco, boogie, yacht rock, blue-eyed soul and AOR with a distinctive soft-focus flex. Naturally, there's plenty to savour on the series fourth edition, much of it either obscure or previously overlooked. Our picks of a predictably strong collection include the horn-totin', much-sampled Pleasure classic 'Nothin' To It', the lusciously loved-up cosmic soul of Prime Time Band's 'Fall in Love in Outer Space', the eyes-closed, Rhodes-sporting AOR soul of 'Stay The Night' by the Farragher Brothers, the slow release swell of Alan Price's 'Groovy Times' and the sun-splashed jauntiness of Max Leake's 'Tell Me The Reasons'.