Soul Jazz back in Port-au-Prince after twenty years, to record again with the Drummers of the Société Absolument Guinin. Mesmeric rhythms and beats traditionally used to induce spirit possession in the Vodou religion — ‘dynamic and riveting in their intricacy and power,’ said the Quietus about the first volume.

Choca with unrelentingly hard and heavy salsa bangers, school of Willie Colon, this 1973 album is the fifth full-length salsa LP led by Julio Ernesto Estrada Rincón, aka Fruko, and the second credited to Fruko Y Sus Tesos. The singers are Joe Arroyo and Wilson ‘Saoko’ Manyoma; besides salsa, the rhythms are mozambique, conga, bomba, and jala jala.
The stone-cold-killer descarga Salsa Na Ma is here. Phew-wee. Raging dancefloor fire.

Rough, tough salsa brava from 1972.
The soaring, soulful vocals of Edulfamid Molina Díaz front an augmented, more aggressive brass section —introducing another trumpet and two trombones to the lineup— swaggering through a dazzling range of rhythms including guaguancó, bomba, plena, oriza, bolero, cha-cha-chá, descarga, and Latin soul.
Warmly recommended.

Choice sides from the recent LP reissue.

‘Pied Piper Productions was a group of Detroit arrangers, writers, artists and musicians who unwittingly drew up the blueprints of Northern Soul, during their brief time together in 1965-1967. Mainstays Jack Ashford, Mike Terry, Joe Hunter and Herbie Williams were original members of Motown studio crew the Funk Brothers. This compilation features some of the biggest Northern Soul discoveries of recent times —like Nancy Wilcox and September Jones — alongside established favourites and other rarities.’

Legendary Northern — the last record played at the Wigan Casino — this archetypal heart-on-sleeve stomper was originally pressed in 1965 by Motown as a handful of promotional copies on its imprint SOUL. Most of these were destroyed soon afterwards, though people say Berry Gordy has a copy, and another was sold in 2009 for just over twenty-five grand.

‘The best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced,’ says Dr John.
The first half of this disc gathers all the sevens Booker cut under his own name at the start of his career, for labels like Imperial, Chess, Ace and Peacock, already evincing his inimitable blend of R&B, gospel, blues, boogie woogie and jazz. The second half features legends like Dave Bartholomew and Joe Tex, during the same period, with Booker as sideman. The likes of Lee Allen, Alvin ‘Red’ Tyler chip in.