Emotional Rescue

Played by: MR ABSOLUTT, Secret Soul Society

Review: There is always a good backstory to the music that Emotional Rescue releases and this EP is a case in point. It comes from Betty & The Code Red and Betty was the girlfriend of Tunde Obazee, a Nigerian-born artist who used music as a "non-violent tool to express his socio-political opinions on global injustice." The pair would entertain people on campus by playing anything they could get their hands on, informed by the old Edo folk songs they had grown up around. They went on to live in Italy and the US and start a family as well as lay down self-released songs that have become cult classics. A selection of them feature on this, the first of two EPs from the pair.

Played by: Juno Recommends Reggae, Ted Ganung

Review: Emotional Rescue is delighted to debut a first. Rather than a straight reissue of an (obscure) classic or a collection of music by an artist or label, here is a compilation of various artists centered around a sound and movement - reggae-tinged music and how it influenced and spread from the Caribbean and diaspora. Drawn from the off kilter digging of archivist, DJ and collector Bruno (perfectliv.es), Nowhere Like Here is not a follow up, but a sideways accompaniment, to his recent and already cult like 'Perfect Motion' collection of left field pop and new wave, recently self-released with Flo Dill (NTS). This is a special release to celebrate the label's 10th year and beyond, offering a treasure trove of lo-fi and often pop inspired reggae cuts, mixing heartfelt Lovers Rock style paeans and quirky private press oddities, all guaranteed to 'make-a-move and tap', these are, in the main ridiculously rare or impossible to find alternative bombs, that are just as sound system rocking and massive bass line quaking showcases of the enduring legacy of this Jamaican music phenomenon. As with much of the early 80s period, the music community was in the throes of a do-it-yourself cultural renaissance as small labels, where crazy limited, one-off White Label Only's came and went. Songs like Avalanche's Your Love Is Such A Good Thing or Warp Speed's Take It To The Night were part of the claiming the means of production in to their own hands, pressing up the records and self-distributing. This raw, naive exuberance can be heard in the songs themselves. This is not reggae or Lovers as known, but something more expressive. Musical, simply produced, but with intelligible and uplifting optimism that is just superlatively catchy. While Paul Thompson's Can I Take You Home and Ras Ibuna's Black Beauty are more straight-ahead Lover's style cuts, there is the parallel dance pop private pressing vibrations of the two Keith Robinson songs and Majority's Caroline included - all part of a thread; a joining of the dots that Nowhere Like Here is at its most basic, a warmth the whole album exudes. This is not a Lovers Rock Hits of some, but a left-of-center versioning, fitting the ethos of Emotional Rescue by presenting something most will not have heard before and all the better for it.

Played by: Juno Recommends Reggae, Tecwaa

Review: UK lover's rock/roots reggae group Dambala has been at the forefront of Emotional Rescue's revival of these sounds in recent years. After a haunting EP last summer we now get an immersive full-length that takes us back to the melting pot of sounds that was London in the 70s and 80s. Revelations is actually a collection of singles from the band recorded between 1978 and 1980 pressed on nice loud wax for heavy DJ deployment. There is a melancholic mood to the synths in these tunes, with weighty dub, fat bass, and skilled guitar all adding the sort of detail that occupies the mind as much as the body.

Played by: Juno Recommends Disco, Discolypso, Fontrodona

Review: The super rarity disco funk Something Got A Hold On Me by Chuck Armstrong gets its first ever official reissue, as Emotional Rescue continues its series of looking at some of the artists working with King Sporty's Konduko label. A long time South Florida native, Armstrong released numerous gospel toned soul 7"s for labels across the US, starting in 1962 with Cleveland's Gemini Records before going on to release with Detroit's Black Rock and Nashville's Sound Stage 7. First working with Noel Williams on the 1973 single, Black Foxy Woman, before releasing his now sought-after album Shakin' Up in 1976, he returned to Konduko 3 years later to explore the shift to disco and boogie with William's masterly production. Coming in at 10 minutes of deep, bottom rattling disco funk, William's teamed Armstrong's vocals of hypnotising love with his in-house Root Rockers band to devastating result. Their unrelenting groove and horns, plus Betty Wright & co's backing vocals counteracting with William's studio skills, is further exemplified in a wonderful dub laden Discomix by Psychemagik. Having released a sneaky edit a few years ago, it seemed fitting to bring the duo of beat diggers, tape manipulators and world travelling DJs, into the official fold by commissioning a new rework that extends, loops and arranges this classic around a nice heavy dose of dub effects for daze.

Played by: Juno Recommends Disco

Played by: Juno Recommends Reggae

Played by: Secret Soul Society

Played by: Juno Recommends Reggae

Review: The second in the series of DJ Duckcomb-affiliated reissues brings the Jamaica / London connection to light, with a reissue of the Brixton based band Red Cloud under the spotlight. Double Talk was their debut release, coming on House / Freestyle / Reggae label Dancefloor Records, first explored by Emotional Rescue several years ago. After meeting with label head, Jeffrey Collins, in his then London base, the band went on release 2 albums, a 12" and 7" with him, as well as notably being Floyd Lloyd Seivright's backing band. The original 1983 12"" - now a highly sought after digger's disco reggae bomb - Double Talk is a perfect summer Lovers jam. A tale of sweat talking, cross loving and loss, with redemption and strength, all backed by an uplifting drum and bass, with guitar, keys and piano highlighting the JA climbs instilled in dem sound. Dubble Dub brings it all down, stripping away and lifting the interplay between keys and piano, allowing guitar to ride above warm bass grooves. Duckcomb then returns with his now trademark riding the vocal'n'dub, gently teasing'n'pulling, looping'n'flipping, before letting the echoplex loose to just let the wonderful groove bump'n'grind.

Played by: Juno Recommends Downtempo

Review: For the second Riddims EP, collating the music of The New Morning, the label highlights further how a group based around the southern Germany Afro-Cosmic scene created a melange of music, a sound, that stepped wide of the house and techno movement then sweeping Europe.

In Global Rhythm Records, friends and producers, DJ Otti and Jay Pee, alongside DJ Thilo and DJ Fred, represented Munich "Westside", running parties and across just 11 self distributed releases, carved their own eclectic niche that were being played by the likes of scene DJs Stefan Egger and Enne.

Slowed afro-percussion, Brazilian flavours, elements of ethno folk, flighty wood instruments, trance overtures, shamanic voices and more are pieced together via heavy sample use in an early hip hop mastermix style.

Again with no track lasting much over 4 minutes, these musical vignettes are perfect tools for the eclectic DJ. Covering uplifting - almost Balearic grooves - to deeper mind-inducing spellbinds and to darker corners of trippy psychedelic invocation, this is The New Morning experience.

Review: Following on from the excellent "Scene In Mirage" reissue that broke O Yuki Conjugate to a whole new crowd, Emotional Rescue return to the archives over-looked Nottingham 'dirty ambient' outfit. Their second LP "Into Dark Water", originally released in 1987, is just as powerful as the first - a hypnagogic journey fuelled by a global stew of sound, feeding into elegant, evocative pieces. Fans of classic Jon Hassell will find much to enjoy here, but equally those appreciating the exotic post punk undercurrents of 23 Skidoo et al will easily find themselves drawn into the likes of "Ba-makala". Stunning, borderless musings from a hidden treasure of the UK's post-industrial heritage.

Played by: Richard Rossa

Played by: Flash Atkins, Juno Recommends Disco, Moustache Love, Reed & Radley

Review: In 2011 Jaki Whitren & John Cartwright's original International Times LP saw a release on Emotional Rescue after originally hitting the shelves in 1982. The pair are now part of a remix EP by Misericord and one-time Internasjonal producer Al Usher, who supplies two remixes and a dub, while a spacey Aphophenia dub to the track "Times" has added for extra measure. Usher's first rework of "Stay Cool" sounds like a 2013 meeting between a purple-clad Prince and a young Diana Ross, while the Dub version sees Prince's funk make way for Giorgio Moroder sound design. Also included is the acoustic-leaning "This Time", which could easily soundtrack a mesmeric highway-driving scene from Thelma & Louise.