Review: The title here's misleading - as a digital-only label, And Friends releases don't really have B-sides - but we'll let them off because 'B-Side Tunes' is as fine a label 'best of so far' comp as yours truly has heard in a while, covering as it does a dazzling array of contemporary dancefloor styles. Rolling, summery nu-disco vibes dominate, but from the garage-y organ grooves of Cosmocomics' 'Make My Love Brighter' to the wigged-out jazz-funk/disco of Uptown Funk's 'Slidin'', and from the peaktime strut of Ezirk's fairly self-explanatory 'Saxophizzle' to Ferdinand Debeaufort's truly sublime, 70s-sounding 'Like The First Time' - which blends elements of disco, mellow Bill Withers/Labi Siffre-esque soul and west coast rock, then tops the lot with a proper earworm of a strings flourish - there's PLENTY to enjoy here. So dive on in!
Review: Just the two rubs to choose from of this trad-style disco stomper from Mexican stalwart Hotmood. In its Original form, 'Don't Stop' is a mid-paced and fairly unassuming lil' roller with a neat line in wukka-wukking geetar, jazzy piano licks and dramatic strings, as well as a somewhat unusual two-part male/female vocal. The accompanying KATORZI Remix, meanwhile, strips out some of the more doodlesome instrumentation in favour of a much more direct and in-your-face approach, with some complex percussion added and the vocal applied far more liberally across its six-minute duration. It's horses for courses, but the Original wins out for yours truly.
Review: With 25 tracks to choose from, this second volume of Mango Sounds' anniversary collection certainly offers plenty of dancefloor bang for your hard-earned buck. No room here to go into every track, obviously, but overall the emphasis is on fairly faithful homages to the original US disco sounds of the late 70s/early 80s, with the odd excursion into more boogie- or funk-inspired territory. With cuts from the likes of Igor Gonya, Ken@Work, Hotmood and C. Da Afro plus a host of more up-and-coming names, this is one more trad-minded disco lovers (as opposed to Italo-fiendin' hipsters) will want to check for sure.
Review: Serbia's Disco Fruit bring us an EP packing one track apiece from some of the biggest names on the contemporary disco scene. 'My Dream Come True' from Mexican fave Hotmood is a hazy, looping affair with a soulful male vocal, while Montenegro's Mitiko reworks Fatback classic 'Do The Bus Stop' as 'Are You Ready'. We stay in re-edit mode as label boss Tonbe, in his Loshmi guise, revists Jimmy Bo Horne's 'Is It In?' on 'Yes It Is', before finally Brian SNR closes out the EP with 'Wanna Kiss You', which sports an almost punk-funk/new wave-style vocal and some glorlously cheesy 80s sax work.
