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Freestyle
Review: Menagerie are a nine-piece 'spiritual jazz' combo from Australia, headed up by The Bamboos main man Lance Ferguson and featuring acclaimed pianist Mark Fitzgibbon, a veteran of Gilles P's legendary Dingwalls sessions. This is the fourth album and their third for Freestyle, and suffice to say fans of their previous output won't be disappointed. Nor will anyone with a taste for 'proper' jazz from the Miles Davis/John Coltrane/Ornette Coleman school of thought: the title track, with its frenetic backbeat and spoken/poetic vocal, nudges towards broken beat territory, while there's a soul-jazz feel to 'Kingdom'... the other four tracks, though, could have been laid down at any time since about 1960. In the best possible way, you understand!
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FSRLP 149
01 Sep 23
Broken Beat/Nu Jazz
01 Sep 23
Broken Beat/Nu Jazz
Review: Freestyle bring us an extended reissue of an album that first saw the light of the day back in 2007. Burnley's Jonathan Radford AKA Diesler was a busy lad in the mid-00s, dropping long-players on the Tru Thoughts label in 2005 and 2006 before switching to Freestyle for his third. 'The Rhythm Station' features many different vocalists and covers a range of styles, from straight-up soul to broken beat and hip-hop... and that's just in the first three tracks! Elsewhere on the album there's room too for lounge-y jazz ('Dopplegang Land') and shufflin' Latino vibes ('The I In Team'), while this Bonus Edition adds in a trio of remixes courtesy of Lack Of Afro, Deela and The Jazzinvaders.
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FSRCD 032DELUXE
04 Aug 23
Funk
04 Aug 23
Funk
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FSRLP 149S1
30 Jul 23
Funk
30 Jul 23
Funk
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FSR 128S4
16 Jun 23
Roots/Lovers Rock
16 Jun 23
Roots/Lovers Rock
Played by: Juno Recommends Disco
Review: T.J. Johnson was the artist alias of Thomas Julien Bedeau, who also worked as a session musician under his own name. He had a handful of releases out in the early 80s and here Freestyle reissue his 1982 debut, which originally came out on UK label Switch. 'Pretty Lady' is underpinned by a fat funk bassline, driven along by an infectious, summer-y guitar groove and topped with alternating boogie-style male and female vocals, augmented by horn blasts, while the accompanying 'Come On Let's Do It (Let's Rock') is a piano- and brass-powered affair with more hefty funk bass, and has something of a Patrice Rushen-esque feel.
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FSR 122
24 Mar 23
Disco/Nu-Disco
24 Mar 23
Disco/Nu-Disco
Review: A must for the boogie lovers here! UK band Chequers formed in Aylesbury in 1973, initially as a reggae band. As the years progressed, they moved first into funk and soul, and then back towards their ska roots during the late 70s Mod revival. Their final release 'Hard Times', however, found them exploring the then-nascent sounds of boogie and electro - to great effect, but sadly little commercial success. Now, with copies of the original 1983 seven-inch selling online for around ?1,000, veteran funk and breaks label Freestyle helpfully bring the world this far more affordable reissue...
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FSR 7098
03 Mar 23
Funk
03 Mar 23
Funk
Played by: Juno Recommends Funk
Review: Freestyle Records has got a brilliant and rather rare bit of boogie here in the form of Eddie Capone's 'I Wont Give You Up.' This is the first officially licensed reissue of this 1985 gem by the reggae, funk and soul mainstay of that decade. He played with various noted outfits such as Chairmen of the Board, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come and Edwin Starr and was also in the short-lived band Casablanca. He founded the Treatment band in the early 1980s and played with a rotating cast of musicians. The tunes included on this single are some of them with Diane Jones providing vocals, which is the standout gem.
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FSR 113
27 Jan 23
Funk
27 Jan 23
Funk
La Famille feat Caron Wheeler
Played by: Juno Recommends Disco
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FSR 116
03 Jun 22
Disco/Nu-Disco
03 Jun 22
Disco/Nu-Disco
Played by: Juno Recommends Funk
Review: If you're thinking, 'Hmm, those are some authentically early 80s-sounding boogie vibes right there!" then you're not wrong, as Freestyle Records reissue a 1981 cut from Rick Clarke, a soul vocalist from North London who would go on to bigger things later in the decade. 'Potion' is served up in simple vocal and instrumental versions so there's not a lot to tell you mix-wise, except to say the instrumental is where some truly sublime geetar really gets to shine through. BTW the track also featured on Z Records' 'Backstreet Brit Funk Vol 2' comp in 2013, and if it's good enough for Dave Lee...
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FSR 108
06 May 22
Funk
06 May 22
Funk
Review: If we're counting correctly this is album number nine from Speedometer in a recording career that stretches back 20 years. As such, if you have any interest at all in 'new old' funk and soul sounds you should know pretty much what to expect, so it's the cuts where they flip the script that are most notable. There's a distinct African slant to the cinematic 'Edge Of Fear', but it's 'Kashmir', a sitar-infused jaunt into psychedelic pastures, that's the standout. Elsewhere the UK veterans run the gamut from soulful acid jazz anthem-in-waiting 'Let's Start A Movement' to the raunchy, wigged-out Hammond jam that is 'Mo' Crunch'.
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FSRCD 130
03 Apr 20
Funk
03 Apr 20
Funk
Various
Review: Freestyle's series of genre-themed download bundles continues, with June's 'Afro & Latin!' and September's 'Funk!' comps now joined by this 40-track collection of soul and disco nuggets from the label's back catalogue. The set kicks off with a bona fide classic in the form of Omar's 'There's Nothing Like This', after which come 39 more cuts from the likes of Carleen Anderson, Kyle Audist and The Fantastics (not to mention, in featured vocalist form, Jocelyn Brown and Caron Wheeler). The title's something of a misnomer - the emphasis is firmly on 'new old' soul, future R&B and neo-soul rather than disco - but there's much to enjoy here all the same.
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FSRSOULDIG 01
13 Dec 19
Soul
13 Dec 19
Soul
Played by: Dj XS (FVUK), The Allergies, Dj N◉va ▶ Rodon FM 95, Craig Charles Funk And Soul, Juno Recommends Funk, LEGO EDIT
Review: Melbourne-based Kiwi Lance Ferguson is a jack of all trades really: producer, songwriter, guitarist, radio broadcaster, DJ and recording artist. His latest offering entitled Raregroove Spectrum is a collection of newly recorded versions of classic funk, soul, jazz and latin vinyl rarities. It features some of Melbourne's finest musicians across the album, including past and present members of local acts The Bamboos, The Putbacks and Hiatus Kaiyote. Ferguson explains that some of these versions can almost be looked at as re-edits: extending/teasing out the elements in a song to make them work on the dancefloor - except he went the extra step and re-recorded them with a live band.
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FSRCD 125
25 Jan 19
Funk
25 Jan 19
Funk
