The second of three volumes presents sublime crossings of gospel with the soul, funk and jazz of the Black Power era. Twenty cuts dot dazzlingly between Muscle Shoals soul, screwed breakbeat, Mizells-style fusion, disco and proto-house. Triumphant re-workings of Sly Stone, Donny Hathaway and Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters will have listeners throwing their pew cushions into the air.

Seventeen gems of fierce funk, rapturous soul and transcendent disco and boogie, super-charged with celebration and affirmativeness, loaded with roaring choirs, rocking horns and popping bass guitars, from the years leading up to Savoy’s acquisition by Malaco.

‘The compilation that started the renaissance… twelve tracks of Buddhist Bubblegum Alt Disco Pop recorded during Arthur’s prime years 1985-90.’

Fourteen new pieces of organic beat music cut from the original sessions in New York, Chicago, London and Los Angeles, featuring Brandee Younger, Tomeka Reid, Dezron Douglas, Joel Ross, Shabaka Hutchings, Junius Paul, Nubya Garcia, Daniel Casimir, Ashley Henry, Josh Johnson, Jeff Parker, Anna Butters, Carlos Niño and Miguel-Atwood Ferguson.

‘What would happen if Erykah Badu, DJ Screw and Sa-Ra had a baby? You’d get Liv.e’ (NPR).
‘Martian soul music’ (Fader).

Celebrating the twentieth year of ensemblehood, BBOJ delivers the band’s signature, funked-up melange of soul, afrobeat and hard riffing jazz. Or, as they call it, ‘now music’. Featuring the humdinger title track of last year’s EP, In The House, this is, as always, uplifting as hell.

‘From the trios of pianists Kyle Shepherd, Bokani Dyer and Yonela Mnana, to the genre-defying exploits of guitarists Vuma Levin and Reza Khota; and from artists inspired by age-old traditions, like Lwanda Gogwana and Mandisi Dyantyis, to the cosmic explorations of Siya Makuzeni, Benjamin Jephta, Thandi Ntuli, Zoë Modiga and Shane Cooper’s Mabuta’  — Johannesburg label Afrosynth rounds up some of SA’s most talented young composers and bandleaders, as well as a wider cast of supporting musicians.

A terrific compilation of vintage UK street soul — at its nexus with rare groove and lovers rock, so intensely nostalgic for us at HJ — by the same crew which put together the excellent For The Love Of You volumes.
A dozen gems here: treasurable DIY labels and whites teeming with raw longing and overproof sincerity, riding limber Soul II Soul-style grooves, wannabe Jam & Lewis, and crunchy, synthy, electro-soul. (The System were the US overmasters of this.)
Just a touch of cheese, a smidgen of sublimely out-of-tune singing, splashes of sploshy beatbox and dodge sampling, a brazen Roy Ayers pinch… components of loveliness.
Calling all midnight ravers and undercover lovers. You know who you are.

Sixteen newly-discovered recordings from the Incredible Beat Of Soweto tour of the UK in 1988-89, including smash hits like Thokozile, Lilizela, Kazet, and the rest.
Bees-knees, overproof-vibes mbaqanga.

The opening track of the Ecstatic Computation album, re-imagined by eight friends and long-time collaborators.
‘Kali Malone turns in a slowed-down, austere and eerie version for two Organs; Evelyn Saylor a vocal ensemble conveying its choral, psychedelic and vitalistic nature. Walter Zanetti composes Fantas for electric guitar. Bendik Giske’s reinterpretation for saxophone and voice captures its atmosphere and its psychic meteorology. Carlo Maria resynthesizes for TR808 and MC202, with an eye on the dancefloor. Jay Mitta’s Singeli pitches up the percussion, unleashing the frenetic, shifting matter within the original into euphoric dance. Baseck’s variation is a hardcore rave fantasia; whilst Kara-Lis Coverdale’s take is a phantasmagoria for piano that gently, yet inexorably, captures the relentlessness chimerical qualities of the original, unveiling its spectral backbone.’

Coloured vinyl.