Back catalogue: Broken Beat/Nu Jazz/Nu Soul

Review: Insense has put together a tidy 7" featuring a rendition of Pharoah Sanders' 'Moon Child' which was first specially crafted for the compilation album Incense Music for Bed Room. It is a lush and spiritual sound led by gorgeous wind instruments and fluttery melodies over gentle and persuasive rhythms. On the flip, Yoshiharu Takeda's 'Bliss Of Landing' is another escapist sound with more of the same. A lovely 45 rpm for those quiet moments.

Review: Dan Ubick is best known as Connie Price, generally found playing with his band The Keystones. But here he's been invited to indulge in a different kind of pursuit by none other than Madly and Stones Throw driving force Egon. They started the Madlib Invazion Library Series to invite certain talented friends to indulge a particular sound in the particular mindset of library music and for Ubick that meant exploring the depth and breadth of something he calls canyon funk. The name is quite explanatory and here you get some heavy funk grooves laced through with Ubick's twanging guitar for a sound which splits the difference between country and funk and comes off sounding like the consummate library album in the process.

Review: Unchained is the longstanding solo project of Nathaniel Davis. Gabbeh is his latest offering to the world, a suite of blissfully introspective tracks that envelop the soul in a blanket of soft, delicate moods, their sole purpose to comfort aching heads. Remarkably, dedicated fans will know you can trace the artist's lineage to noise mix tapes on CD-R, although more recent excursions into Bossa nova influenced tones perhaps help bridge the gap between then and now. Recorded at home over a three year period, from 2020 to 2023, Grenoble, Switzerland, played a big part in end results here. "I think certain songs reflect, in ways, Grenoble's natural surroundings. 'Drac' is named after the river that flows from the mountains down to the city - 'Dru' is the name of a well-known peak near Chamonix," Davis has explained. That as may be, nevertheless there's something more transportive than that here - songs feel as though they would be at home anywhere green, slow and thoughtful.

Review: London-based quartet Uniri takes a unique approach by composing as a collective and bringing in new-beat aesthetics while steering away from traditional jazz band and "bedroom production" concepts. Founded by Chiminyo, Uniri, meaning 'one unified dream,' came to life in his private studio, inviting jazz peers Amane Tsuganami, Al Macsween, and Luke Wynter for spontaneous collaborations. The result, Infinite Reflections, delivers a psychedelic, rhythmic journey infused with cosmic synths and hip-hop beats. Embracing a global trend in jazz fusion, Uniri's debut album promises an innovative aesthetic akin to artists like Flying Lotus and Ras G.

Review: Before becoming the multi-instrumentalist and producer extraordinaire behind most of Favorite Recordings' disco, boogie and jazz-funk flavoured releases, Bruno 'Patchworks' Hovart delivered one of the best revivalist funk albums of the 21st century, 2009's "The Empire Strikes Back", under the Uptown Funk Empire alias. Here he revisits the album, gathering together a bunch of killer cuts previously included on digital versions of the set but omitted from the vinyl release. As you'd expect, it's an authentic-sounding affair full of killer grooves, brilliant instrumental arrangements, fluid solos and dancefloor-ready workouts shot through with knowing references to 1970s black American music. There's one previously unheard gem - the righteous and celebratory "Party" - and a whole lot of insatiable good-time grooves.