Can't get enough of Soul Funk Boogie? Frontline Producer has got your fix with the second edition, offering everything you need for the most soulful and funky tracks
Review: The mysterious Funk Windows return to Sound Exhibitions with a new four-track slab that, as the EP title suggests, looks to the African funk scene for inspiration. The Afro influences are furthest to the fore on the EP's two vocal cuts, the lively, rolling opener 'Ouma Koume' and the more ponderous 'Minimal Day', while bass, guitar and horns workout 'Funky Times' and the sparse, looping 'Mr Funk' (which comes on a bit like The Last Poets minus the rapping) are perhaps a little more universal in their funk MO, but it's all good, as they say - with 'Funky Times' leading the charge to these ears.
Review: Four typically solid contemporary funk jams here from Sound Exhibitions regular Funk Windows, coming just two weeks after his/her/their last release, the 'Africa Funk' EP. This time out, the Afro stylings are put on a back burner; instead you get the slow-building title cut (which would make a fine set-opener), 'Roller Night' which has a slightly more wonked-out/off-kilter feel, and then 'Bisca' and 'Low Down', both of which up the jazz ante somewhat, the former rocking some fine sax and a cut-up, chipmunk-y vocal while the latter has a similar MO but busts out the flutes. The EP as a whole is a headnodder's delight.
Review: High Park Funk - AKA Tesko - hails from Glasgow in Scotland, but his most obvious musical contemporaries would be US artists like Thundercat or perhaps Amp Fiddler, as on this, his third album if we're counting correctly, he fuses funk, jazz-funk, hip-hop and broken beat into a musical concoction that isn't quite any of the above and yet somehow all of them at the same time. Tracks range from the Zapp/Cameo-isms of 'Signals' and 'Let The Funk Permeate' to the wonked-out bruk jazz of 'Subconscious Streams', and it all adds up to a long-player that on the one hand is quite cerebral and muso-esque, but on the other is definitely constructed with the shaking of booties on dancefloors in mind.
Review: London-based newcomers In Dat Groove describe themselves as "a jazz/lounge project" and here they make their debut on DJ Spen's Unquantize label with a track produced in collaboration with Boston-based vocalist Lee Wilson. In its Original form, 'Give My Love' is essentially an R&B cut, though it'd play equally well on many soulful house and broken beat floors. The label boss's refix adds a rock-solid 4/4 kick and pushes the track more decisively into soulful house territory, but for this writer it's L'Amour Disco's rerub that takes the gold, as the mysterious UK producer reworks 'Give My Love' into an 80s boogie groover.
Review: Joji Chissu has aimed high with his debut album, 'Erotic Paradise', combining a wealth of collaborations and inventive musical fusions with nods to his Japanese heritage and colourful, city pop and boogie-influenced synthesizer sounds. In practice, that means an attractive blend of revivalist '80s electrofunk (Clementine Esquivel hook-up 'Erotic Paradise'), the smooth street soul flex of 'The Art of Seduction' (with Janessa J), soulful nu-jazz ('Sunshine' with D'o D'o and the Koyto Jazz Massive-esque 'Mixed Signals'), harmonica-sporting homages to NYC boogie ('Dirty Harmonica' with Leon Van Egmond), and nods to the Fugees ('Downtown Party'), P-funk ('Perfect Illusion', featuring Regix) and head-nodding blunted beats ('Mixed Signals').
Review: Melbourne, Australia-based DJ/producer Ken Walker - the possessor of perhaps THE best artist moniker in the game - follows up last summer's debut full-length 'Discopolis' with a second volume that's every bit as essential. Rocking an overall vibe somewhere between contemporary (rather than 'nu') disco and disco-house, the album opens with 'What In The World', which nods to The Police's 'When The World Is Running Down', and closes with 'Saxophonica', which marries the risque spoken vocal from Jimmy Z feat Dr Dre's 'Funky Flute' (which also appears on 'Blow It') to the sax line from Men At Work's 80s hit 'Who Can It Be Now?'. It's fair to say our Ken isn't averse to dropping the odd familiar sample, then: in fact, the 15 cuts here blur the lines between sampling and re-editing. But trust us, the dancefloor's going to be far too busy dancing to worry about that.
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