Search results: Jenny Lee

Review: From an ardent blogger to an in-demand compiler, Paul Hillery's obsessive approach to music discovery has taken him far. As well as working with the likes of BBE, he's been fostering a working relationship with Re:Warm which now yields a second volume of the fantastic Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours series. The title is instructive, and somewhere in the folds of private press joints and forgotten album cuts Hillery finds a thread which binds together seemingly disparate sounds. There's delicate singer-songwriter seances from the likes of Lucy Kitchen and psychedelic, roving magic from Stallions remixing Findlay Brown and much more besides.

Review: Two-Piers is one of those very special imprints that has tasked itself with unearthing the kind of gems people who compile movie soundtracks only ever seem to be able to find. In the past, the label's compilations have focused on essay-worthy things like the evolution of French pop (1964-2019, no less), and but in this case the team turns its attention to a bonafide zeitgeist.

Calling everything here 'rare' would be overstating it - we have legendary household names in the form of Nina Simone, Willie Nelson, and Tim Buckley, to name but a few. But nothing here is an obvious choice, calling to mind a bygone age when you could still find yourself discovering new material by chart-toppers years after falling in love with them because access to everything was limited. Aligned by a feeling - late nights spent stargazing with equally obsessed musos - what's here is marvelously timeless.

Review: While lots has been written about the influence of Black American soul and R&B artists on Britain's most successful (white) bands of the 1960s, little focus has previously fallen on the music of black Britons - and others from elsewhere in the Commonwealth who called the UK home - during the same period. Gotta Get A Good Thing, which tells the story of black music in Britain in the "swinging sixties", is therefore long overdue. Musically, it skips through soul, rhythm & blues, ska, rocksteady and more besides, offering up tracks from both well-known names and overlooked artists. Throw in extensive liner notes - including an introductory essay from Fitzroy Facey of the Soul Survivors - and you have a genuinely essential compilation.

Review: Re:Warm struck gold when they invited Paul Hillery to compile the first volume of Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours, so they did the right thing and invited him back for another round. Hillary started out documenting his arcane finds in this ill-defined thread of music via a blog, and now these shockingly rare gems from forgotten corners of 60s and 70s are given a proper airing for everyone to savour. This is a prime example of digging culture at its best, as a sharp curatorial ear cuts through the forgettable dross to find unbelievable tracks like effervescent jazz groover 'Weepin' by Cascada, a tune worth the price of entry alone.