‘Oo-ooh, I’m burning…’ Slinky, sultry, in-the-pocket West Coast soul, from BG’s forgotten, late-seventies stint with Warners.
It shames the assignations in Lew Kirton’s classic Heaven in the Afternoon — out the same year — as routine, pedestrian sex.
Lovely, entwined piano and xylophone.
Composed by Mac Davis, who wrote In The Ghetto for Elvis. ‘I try to tell the truth and hope it rhymes.’
Killer.

Outsider electro-funk entirely self-produced, designed and distributed by Fushimi himself in 1985, featuring some deadly shamisen in amongst the drum machines and synths.
With a four-page insert including the hand-written comic which came with the original release, plus an English translation.

The single LP via Rhino is in lovely mono.

The double LP is newly transferred from the master tapes, remastered, and cut at 45rpm, in an all-analogue process.
Presented in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve by Analogue Productions, as part of its Atlantic 75 audiophile series.

Blaxploitation from the Staples and Curtis Mayfield. The title track is all-time knockout soul music: Mavis is startlingly randy, over a masterful, sinuous rhythm. Goddess. New Orleans winningly sublimates I Heard It On The Grapevine; I Want To Thank You is decent, too; Curtis throws in a few Shaft-style instrumentals.
That title track, though.

Crucial eighties soul, this is crushingly killer. Pedigree hangdog.

His startling 1970 comeback for Reprise, recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. A blend of blues, Sly Stone and country rock loaded with the Richard scream, rollicking piano and booting saxophone. ‘He was just singing his booty off,” recalled Travis Wammack (who wrote Greenwood, Mississippi for the session).
The title track kicks off side two with a staggering dollop of super-heavy funk: ten increasingly frazzled minutes of breaks-and-beats heaven pilfered by everyone from Big L and Lord Finesse to Prodigy.

With delirious Latin jazz dancers like Latin Strut and Aftershower Funk… and a Spanish-language version of Ordinary Guy.

Ruggedly funky, tantalisingly rare do-over of Sly & The Family Stone, by Jackie Mittoo and the crew.

Surprisingly the first time on 12” for this brassy, string-laden, modern/Northern crossover classic, more Philly than NYC. Beautifully written by Thom Bell, expertly remixed by Tom Moulton.

Legendary Joe Clausell mixes.