Review: The artist formally known as Joey Negro aka Dave Lee brings together a fresh and unique compilation with partner in sound Will Fox that dives deep into the west end sound of London's broken beat, soul and two-step scene. Featuring tracks from the likes of Bugz In The Attic, Jazzanova and Atjazz to 4 Hero and Sunburst Band, we've pulled up numbers like NSM's deep, woozy and downtempo "DJ Power (Use It)" to Jazztronik's piano-laden and garaged influenced "Samurai". Sweet, warm and deeply vocal still is Afronaut & Melissa Browne's "Transcend M.E." with a stripped back, breathy and stepping number from Mark de Clive-Lowe, with Likwid Biskit's closing track "The All New Ummm" surfing into some balmy, LA beat-scene territory.
Review: Joey Negro focuses entirely on the Brit Funk movement of the 1970s and 80s on his latest mix compilation. The twenty-three tracks provide an extensive history on the genre and contain a number of extremely rare and very sought after crate digging collectables. Avoiding the huge hits of the scene which appear on retrospectives the world over, Negro unleashes a host of the genre's underground club hits that remained only on the local scene, many of which were re-edited by Negro exclusively for this compilation. Do not miss this.
Review: Dutty Audio are turning ten years old this week and boy do they know how to live large and celebrating larger, as their 10 Years of Dutty Audio compilation brings together some of the biggest names in drum & bass for a firestorm of crushing basslines and hammered up hits. Chromatic, Mefjus, Teddy Killerz, Level 2, Neve and Optiv & BTK are amongst the heavyweights on the release and it's a stellar lineup for the label to have secured. Level 2 brings one of the more considered, stripped back cuts of the compilation with 'Nothing To Fear', which has a bounciness that belies the undertones of ferocity which lie beneath it. Mefjus is on top form as per with his remix of 'Whatever', and Neve is back to his usal breaksy, creative tricks with 'Space Cowboy's'. Wicked stuff.
