Released by Stax in 1973 — a massive rare groove album, sampled by Digable Planets and Jay-Z (amongst others) — Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth was a brooding, deep-funk admonition to the new black middle class, with no prospect of commercial success.
For its follow-up, Dale Warren cut out the rhetoric, and for political consolation dug deep into his musical roots, and his time in the mid-sixties as a songwriter at Shrine and Motown.
But Stax closed in 1975, and the tapes were abandoned. Now, miraculously retrieved from a Chicago basement, here’s a precious taster: hurt, disillusioned, beautiful, pure, sensuous Windy City soul music ,jazzy but street, musically sophisticated but emotionally direct. 
The sleeve is all-black, with black-on-black text, and an embossed silhouette of the group — ‘probably the nicest single LP we’ve ever made’, says Numero.
Hurt, disillusioned, beautiful, pure, sensuous Windy City soul music from the mid-1970s, never out before.

‘Red Greg’s edit of this disco holy grail.’

French-Belgian electro-samba, cornered. A mini-LP on the Brussels label, Les Disques Du Crepuscule, from 1982; augmented here by the first Antena EP, a few B-sides, compilation tracks, and unreleased cuts.

‘This sequel to their landmark 1971 masterpiece Like A Ship finds the young Chicago preacher and his Youth for Christ Choir continuing their genre-bending spiritual journey. Banging drums, soaring falsettos, euphoric tambourines, effulgent horns, and Barrett’s unwavering devotion spark off a forty-piece choir, working up a sanctified slab of gospel funk. Pressed in a minuscule quantity in 1973, Do Not Pass Me By was sold primarily from the pulpit of Barrett’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church, disappearing into Chicago’s south side for forty-five years.’

Gospel soul classic from 1971, with Gene Barge, Phil Upchurch and Richard Evans, besides the rapturous Youth For Christ Choir. Good enough for Donny Hathaway, good enough for us.

‘The Numero Group guide to private issue new age. Featuring Laraaji, Iasos, Joanna Brouk, Don Slepian, Peter Davison, Master Wilburn Burchette, Jordan De La Sierra, David Casper, Robert Slap and nine other pioneers of the Perrier underground. Adorned with Marcus Uzilevsky’s Linear Landscapes, this 2xLP compilation is housed in a sturdy tip-on jacket and is accompanied by a 32-page booklet. The fourth world awaits.’

Just one!

Best of the in-house Soul Kitchen, Luau, and Bounty labels: a treasure trove of kitchen-sink eccentric soul, fuzzbox funk, shoestring doo-wop, and haunted, eerily hook-laden spirituals. Out-of-this-world packaging.

Invoking The Delfonics’ Do You Remember, and flipping its melody the other way around. Recorded at the Damon Studios in Kansas City (owned by Victor Damon, inventor of the spring reverb).

‘It’s always summer somewhere, but especially so wherever Cheryl Glasgow’s carefree clubber Glued To The Spot gets a spin. An absolute ear-worm from the opening strums, Glasgow’s Sade-adjacent, jazz vocalese sweeps into a warm up-tempo groove, never breaking sweat. Issued on Ross Anderson’s short-lived, London-based Live label, Glued To The Spot swept through the club scene briefly in 1987, embarking for warmer shores when the season changed.’

Calypso, blues, disco, funk, reggae, bruckdown, soul, folk — in the kitchen, Belizians would call it Boil Up. For the New York Post, ‘indispensable’; the Chicago Tribune’s ‘best reissue of the year’ (2006).

Seventies Caribbean soul and funk — one ear tuned in to nearby Miami, with reggae and jazz in the mix too — from Frank Penn’s Freeport operation.