Tony Allen : When One Road Close

Tony Allen is the Nigerian-born drummer, composer and songwriter who, along with Fela Kuti, pioneered afrobeat music, a new blend of jazz and traditional African juju and highlife, in the mid-1960s. Tony learnt to play drums when he was a radio technician at about the age of 18. He has his own unique style, using his 4 limbs, not his whole body! He started to play jazz together with Fela in 1964. Fela and Tony continued to develop the afrobeat sound in 1969 when they went to USA and met many top black American musicians. Tony was not only Fela's lead drummer but also had the very important role of musical director of the band Fela Kuti & Africa 70. Many of their original vinyl recordings from the 1970s, such as Jealousy and Progress, No Accomodation for Lagos and No Discrimination, have been reissued on CD. Tony decided to leave Fela in the late 1970s. Later he moved to Europe where he collaborated with many top musicians like Manu Dibango, Ray Lema and Roy Ayers and spear-headed the successful NEPA (Never Expect Power Always) project. Indeed Tony features on Manu Dibango's Wakafrika CD. The amazing album Black Voices was released in 1999 and once again Tony records with many other top musicians. He wants to fuse afrobeat with modern music like funk, rock and hip-hop, hence he has been working with people like Doctor L for the recording Black Voices and they also both appear on Psycho On Da Bus. He believes that, despite its complexity, afrobeat is gaining popularity. At present Tony often performs with his own band but also can still be found alongside Manu Dibango, for example, at The Barbican in London in April 2001. He is, without doubt, extraordinary, full of funky, groovy rhythms as well as outstanding, hard-hitting lyrics. (jahs)

6th Borough Project : Stratus Quo

6th Borough Project brings popular club releases these days.
This one is a modern disco clubtrack, a cheeky disco trip from the love boat. “Stratus Quo”, an edit of another personal favourite, Donald Bank's "Status Quo" - as relevant today as it was back in the day of Reaganomics. The 6th Borough Project give us some tracky beatdown Rhodes action on the intro and sends us a message with the wholy crap deep 'n tight bassline.

2 Many Dj's : The Magnificent Romeo

One the better mash-ups around...

The New Mastersounds : Idle Time (Lack of Afro Remix)

The crazy idea super-cool Milan indie label Record Kicks had was to ask to a bunch of talented contemporary funk, nu jazz and broken soul remixers to work on the "raw" deep funk NMS sound. The result is an absolutely essential compilation full of irresistible nu funk, soul, broken, headz future classics.

Ingrid Lucia & the Flying Neutrinos : Mr. Zoot Suit

From The New York Post:
"Ingrid Lucia ... is singing in an appealingly ripe voice with a style that owes a good bit to Billie Holiday ... The Neutrinos would also be a natural for any talk show, not just for their musical talent but for their unusual life style having been street performers for a dozen years."
- Chip Deffaa - Jazz Critic - New York Post

From The New York Press:
"Ingrid's magnetic stage presence is a combination of torchy voluptuousness and down-home amicability; it just doesn't seem right that she's slinking onstage in that form-fitting, gold lame dress when she starts talking long yarns about growing up carny. ... The effortless, traveling-roadshow spirit of every Flying Neutrinos performance has made us Sunday-evening regs."
- New York Press - Best of Manhattan '95

The Quantic Soul Orchestra : Panama City (Soul Descarga)

Irresistibly funky ! Will Holland has been on his travels and Tropidelico has some of the Worlds finest musicians on it's books. Heavily influenced by Will's current residence, Colombia, this album is best described as tropical funk, Arabian jazz and psychedelic soul. Guests include J Live, Noelle Scaggs, Afredo Linares, Kabir, Javier Rivera & Hector Sotomayer and the UK's funkiest drummer Malcolm Catto. Sublime!

Sharon Jones : I Learned the Hard Way

Produced by Bosco Mann and recorded on an Ampex eight-track tape machine by Gabriel Roth in Daptone Records’ House of Soul studios, this record drips with a warmth and spontaneity rarely found since the golden days of Muscle Shoals and Stax. Sharon’s raw power, rhythmic swagger, moaning soulfulness, and melodic command set her firmly alongside Tina Turner, James Brown, Mavis Staples, and Aretha as a fixture in the canon of soul music. From the lushPhilly-Soul fanfare that ushers in “The Game Gets Old” at the top of the record, to the stripped down Sam Cooke-style“Mama Don’t Like My Man” at the tail, the Dap-Kings dance seamlessly through both the most crafted and simple arrangements with subtlety and discipline. I Learned the Hard Way is the “Daptone Sound” at its finest.
I Learned the Hard Way is the fourth studio album by American soul and funk band Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, released April 6, 2010 on Daptone Records. Production for the album took place at the label's House of Soul Studios during 2009 to 2010 and was handled by Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth, credited for the album as "Bosco Mann". The album debuted at number 15 on the US Billboard 200, selling 23,000 copies in its first week. Upon its release, I Learned the Hard Way received generally positive reviews from most music critics.

Southern Culture on the Skids : Camel Walk

Another massive party track ! The band appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1995, performing "Camel Walk" from their album Dirt Track Date. Dirt Track Date is the fifth full-length album by Southern Culture on the Skids. The band attracted a modicum of national attention in 1995 with the release of the song "Camel Walk" from this album.
"Camel Walk" is played during the end credits of the 1996 movie "Flirting with Disaster".

Communicators & Black Experience Band : The Road

Super Rare funk 45 of the Communicators and The Black Experience Band "The Road" released on Tri Oak records 1974.

7 Miles Per Hour Band : Latin Freak

re-Released in 2006 on Kay-Dee Records produced by Jerry Hodges and Terry Taylor.
Kenny Dope and Keb Barge have unearthed another funk gem in the shape of this 12" by 7 Mile Per Hour Band of Buffalo. New York. Lead track, 'At The Disco' is a raucous floor-filler with some wailing James Brown-style vocals. The horn riff on second cut 'Latin Freak' is a particular treat, while 'Playing Your Game' is a bit more subdued and less relentlessly upbeat, favouring instead a more soulful edge.
The drum work and horn arrangement makes latin freak a must have for funk & soul advocates.

Clarence Reid : Masterpiece (Kenny Dope Edit)

Reid started off writing songs for artists including Betty Wright, Sam & Dave, Gwen McCrae, and KC & the Sunshine Band. He also recorded a few hits of his own in the '60s.
Reid would write sexually explicit versions of hit songs for fun but only performed them for his friends at parties or in the studio. In 1971 he along with a band of studio musicians recorded a whole album of "dirty" songs under the name "Blowfly". Back then, no record label would release profane material so he distributed the records himself on his own independent record label, Weird World.
The album, The Weird World of Blowfly, features Reid dressed as a low-rent supervillain on its cover. Reid created this alter ego to protect his career as a songwriter. Reid continued to perform in increasingly bizarre costumes as his Blowfly character. The albums were widely popular as "party records" in the '70s.
Many of Blowfly's songs featured his style of talking in rhyme which can be considered a primitive form of rapping. After rap music hit the mainstream with Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", Reid recorded a profane version of "Rapp Dirty" titled "Blowfly's Rapp [sic]". The song was a hit and helped the album, Blowfly's Party, reach #26 on Billboard magazine's Black Albums chart and #82 on the Billboard Top 200 in 1980."Rapp Dirty" was sampled by The Avalanches on the song "Electricity" from their 2000 album Since I Left You, and is among Blowfly's songs to have been sampled in numerous hip hop and electronic songs.
Blowfly's profane style earned Reid legal trouble. He was sued by songwriter Stanley Adams, who was ASCAP president at the time, for spoofing "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" as "What a Difference a Lay Makes". (wiki)

African Music Machine : Tropical

Here we go again !

The African Music Machine was an eight-piece funk outfit from New Orleans led by bassist/songwriter Louis Villery. They got their start as a house band for the Jewel/Paula label axis, playing on records by the likes of Fontella Bass, Little Johnny Taylor, Roscoe Robinson, Ted Taylor, Tommie Young, and singer/producer Bobby Patterson, among others. From 1972-1974, they cut several of their own singles for the Patterson-owned Soul Power subsidiary. Most of their work was done in a heavy, James Brown vein, sometimes with a bit of Creole influence mixed in. Their original 45s -- including "Black Water Gold," "Tropical," and "The Dapp" -- later became highly prized items among funk collectors, fetching outlandish prices; a compilation of singles, also titled Black Water Gold, was reissued in 2000. In 2001, Villery assembled a new version of the African Music Machine and released an eponymous album on Singular. (Amg)