Staff Picks w / c 19th June 2020

Review: Mr Bongo recently served up a tasty 7" single featuring two of Cymande's best-loved tracks, "Fug" and "Brothers on the Slide". Here they repeat the trick, slapping the two most-played tracks from the British band's incredible 1972 debut album, Cymande, on one "45". The A-side boasts "Bra", a killer chunk of funk/soul/reggae fusion with one of the most recognizable grooves around. Hip-hop heads will know it inside out, since DJs have been doubling up with copies of "Bra" since the mid 1970s. On the flip you'll find "The Message", a sublime, slightly more spaced out reggae-funk workout rich in snaking sax lines, memorable vocals and a groove so distinctive it couldn't come from any other band.

Review: Before she made a name for herself with a string of killer disco, jazz-funk and fusion records in the late '70s and early '80s, Dee Dee Bridgewater was a rising star on the global jazz underground. This period of her career is best exemplified by 1974 debut album "Afro Blue", a fine vocal jazz album recorded in Tokyo with a backing band made up of husband Cecil (a top trumpeter) and high-quality Japanese session musicians. As this reissue proves, the album has lost none of its allure. There's much to set the pulse racing throughout, from the breezy soul-jazz shuffle of opener "Afro Blue" and the emotive "Blues Medley", to the superb slowed-down jazz cover of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" and blissful "People Make The World Go Round".

Review: Acclaimed crate-digger turned disco re-editor KON has decided to launch his own reissue imprint, Kontemporary. The idea is simple: to accompany re-mastered original tracks with fresh rubs from the man himself. 12" number one offers another opportunity to enjoy George Duke's soulful, sun-kissed, disco-era jazz-funk bomb "I Want You For Myself". On the A-side you'll find Duke's own impeccable 12" version, with KON's re-edit gracing the B. Having access to the original multi-track tapes has allowed the New York-based producer to not only include an atmospheric, extended intro (a tactic regularly used by fellow rework merchants The Revenge and Joey Negro), but also give more prominence to Duke's superb piano solos.

Review: Berlin-based rising star Sally C has decided to launch a label, the brilliantly named Big Saldo's Chunkers, with a debut EP of tracks she made after listening to copious amounts of turn-of-the-90s hip-house. The standout track - though the standard is uniformly high - is probably the sweaty and bustling A-side "OG Chunker", where bubbly motifs and rap vocal snippets ride a rolling, thickset groove. "Let's Get This" feels and sounds like a tribute to both hip-house legend "Fast" Eddie Smith and the more muscular style of "Sound Factory" house popularized by Junior Vasquez, while "Turn That" is a wonderfully low-slung and pumping affair that comes on like Mr Lee's "Pump Up Chicago" for the Boiler Room generation.

Review: Vivian Jackson's "Conquering Lion" is a bona fide roots classic often thought as of a cornerstone of the genre. It is superbly spiritual music from a higher plane that will uplift your soul whilst also awakening your brain. It features harmonies supplied by The Ralph Brothers with keys that are always there, nagging away in beautiful fashion. As well as the full vocal on the a-side, Kind Tubby steps up for a huge dub on the flip that encourages you to utterly let go and one which dub techno fans will know has been reworked by Steve O'Sullivan to Miller effect .

Review: Watch yer bassbins, Club Winston is back with another loud n' lairy bit of wub for his wickedly named UKGEORGE label. This is club pressure that's as serious as it is silly, boiling garage and rave tropes down for maximum efficiency and celebrating the limitless joy of a wobbly bassline. "Blurt" keeps things raw and direct, stomping at a nifty tempo and teasing the tension and release with the simplest of ingredients. "Reject" on the flip has a sweeter vibe, using little touches of melody to create a mellower mood but not at the expense of the all-important low end.

Review: Tokyo's Hoshina Anniversary boasts an impressive discography, with must-check singles on ESP Institute, Safe Trip, Jack Department, and GND Records to his name. The majority of these were naturally dancefloor focused and rather robust, just like his earliest album on Boyznoize. Yet in recent years, he's taken to exploring the more atmospheric worlds of ambient and electronica, and it's these sounds that form the backbone of new album "Go Shichi Go Shichi Shichi". Big on bold, bubbly synthesizer melodies, spacey chords, alien-sounding electronics and quirky, off-kilter rhythms, the album flits between ambient soundscapes, otherworldly IDM and fiendishly fuzzy soundscapes that add a layer of experimental intensity to the producer's often ear-catching compisitions.

Review: It's taken a while, but finally SUED co-founder SVN (real name Sven Rieger) has delivered a debut solo album. Ominously, the accompanying release sheet only features the following words: "the end of an era". Perhaps we'll find out more about what that means in future; for now, we can enjoy "Mechine", because it's as strange, off-kilter, inspired and involving as we've come to expect. Rieger's analogue-rich sound takes elements from a number of styles and sounds - acid, ambient, electronica, ultra-deep house, mid-90s IDM, ghetto-tech, weird slow jams etc - without fully embracing any. As a result, "Mechine" is quirky and curious, but also full-to-bursting with leftfield gems that will variously soothe, seduce and surprise the senses.

Review: What proportion of the rock 'n' roll pantheons Neil Young will occupy when he finally (God forbid) stables the Crazy Horse is anyone's guess, but you'd better believe it will be more than most artists. 'Homegrown', until now at least, was at risk of being missing from those chapters, which would have been a crying shame given it epitomises what a songwriting tour de force he was in the 1970s. There's a raw feel to the album that goes beyond the near-50-year-old born-on date, perhaps best encapsulated in the fact we open mid-note - the tape started rolling after the maestro began playing. At the time Young was reeling from a breakup, and eventually decided not to release the album at all due to its personal subject matter. Now ready to let the world in, it's quintessential Young but also one of the closest we've ever got to his soul, albeit retrospectively.

Review: Barely a week goes by without a new release that has Lee "Scratch" Perry's name on it somewhere. This one from Rock A Shaka in Japan brings together all the best bits from the famous Black Arc studio and features big names like The Upsetters, Junior Murvin, The Silvertones, and Perry himself. There's a laidback air of sun kissed Caribbean grooves from top to bottom, with various Dubpate Mixes, full vocal versions and dubs adding up to a feel good collection of loved-up riddims that will slide their way into your affections.

Review: It's quite shocking it's been six years since the last Caribou album, 2014's knockout "Our Love". Dan Snaith has never felt the need to rush his music out, and there was an interim Daphni album in 2017 to be fair to the guy, but here we are with a new set that sees Snaith returning to a little of the delicate songwriting and winsome electronica he forged his reputation on in the early days. There's a lot going on in here, from smooth as silk yacht rock-isms to deliriously modernist cut ups and more than a few wild pitch shifts to keep listeners on their toes. It's playful and heartfelt, and rarely lingers in one place for too long while still retaining a sense of calm. It may be not at all what you expected from Caribou's return, but we'd wager it's even better than you hoped.

Review: Folktronica mainstay Bibio returns with more of his pastoral delights. The talented instrumentalist and producer perfectly fuses his two distinctive sounds into a lush new world that is soothing, escapist and thoughtful, His lyrics, of course, lend the album real weight beyond the pure musical joy, though his acoustic guitar and violin sure does take some beating. If you can, it's also worth searching out the video for "Sleeping On The Wing" - an animated piece by Sonnye Lim that shows bird flight and live Bibio performances interspersed with one another.