Review: New Orleans' Grammy nominated Hot 8 Brass Band release their fifth LP. The title of the new album refers to that special moment in a New Orleans parade when the band stops to take a break but keeps noodling with their instruments for the crowd. When they're completely in the moment: they sync up and the magic happens - a new tune is created: On The Spot. It also points to the way the band have had to adapt, learn and live from moment to moment throughout their careers and their lives. A tragic series of events - the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the separate deaths of five band members plus trumpeter Terrell "Burger" Batiste losing his legs in a car crash: these moments have tested these men time and again. Their life-affirming story has been featured in the Spike Lee documentaries When The Levees Broke and The Creek Don't Rise plus David Simon's HBO series Treme. In true Hot 8 style, this album pairs hard hitting, heart-on-sleeve sentiment with party fuelling beats, hooks and grooves; raw funk and charismatic hip hop vocals mix with Big Easy jazz elegance. "We still break down a lot," says bandleader and tuba player Bennie Pete, "but now it's tears of joy. We keep everything in our hearts, but we keep on."
Review: New Orleans' ensemble, Hot 8 Brass Band, are back with more of what they do best - bringing their raucous, genre-bustin' celebratory sound to the world. There is a mix here of three new tunes and some remixes to shake it like madman to with the seven minute trumpet-led mayhem of Can't Nobody Get Down leading the pack. Elsewhere "Take It To The House" is a simmering potboiler of rhythms and live favourite "That Girl" also appears. Reggae producer Wrongtom remixes their iconic cover of Sexual Healing, a tune also given a trippy reworking by Ray Cooper too!
Review: Thanks to his BBC 6Music show, self-styled "complete package" - comic, actor, radio presenter, DJ and stand-up poet - Craig Charles has become the UK's best-known funk and soul enthusiast. It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that his annual Funk & Soul Club compilations are extremely popular. This third collection is every bit as potent as predecessors, featuring as it does a riotous mix of heavy funk, horn-totin' soul revivalism, dancefloor-friendly funk breaks (Skeewiff and Stephen Gray), cheeky brass band workouts (Hot 8 Brass Band's famous cover of "Sexual Healing") and a dash of smooth soul (the effortless Omar). With all bases covered and some killer material, it should be essential listening for all those of a soul and funk persuasion.
Review: A one-man powerhouse of studio funk, Adam Gibbons' Lack of Afro alias has amassed an enormous catalogue of remixes and rarities in a relatively short space of time. On this Freestyle compilation, some of his most dynamic funk, Latin and boogaloo-shaped makeovers are here to savour, such as his extension of the Hot 8 Brass Band's "It's Real" or the more disco-slanted rejig of Kraak & Smaak's "Squeeze Me".
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