Review: Some classy contemporary disco fare here from Irish producer Jones, coming to you courtesy of Israeli label Thunder Jam. 'Fluty Loops' itself opens with an intricate, extended percussive intro, before funk geetar and stabby strings usher in the meandering flute line that gives the track its title - imagine Joey Negro remixing Roy Ayers and you're somewhere in the ballpark. 'Everybody' shows the same attention to detail in the percussion department but has a more Chic-ish vibe, while completing the EP is the more sultry 'Been So Hard', which comes on like Linda Clifford given a Balearic makeover...
Review: Greek producer Chris GS returns to Israel's Thunder Jam with four more slices of reworked vintage funk/disco goodness. He's dug nice and deep for this set, so the original source material remains a mystery in most cases, but in his hands 'Shake It' is a strings-drenched disco number that would've sounded right at home on the 'Saturday Night Fever' soundtrack, while 'Lady' rocks a slightly rawer funk vibe. The same goes for 'The Funk', which reworks Positive Force's 'We Got The Funk' from 1979, while finally 'About It' leans a little closer towards early 80s boogie territory.
Review: Bustling breakbeat badman turned re-edit hero Morlack has served up some scintillating stuff of late, including a brilliant four-tracker on Katakana Edits. Here he gets his re-edit groove on for Thunder Jam. It's a decent label debut which moves from vaguely Balearic '80s Afro-boogie (the synth and filter-sporting "Kalimba Tree") to chunky, hard-wired P-funk brilliance (the Bootsy Collins-esque bounciness of "Agony"), via smooth, slick and seductive '80s soul ("Control", whose slap-bass, screeching car tyre effects and sassy female vocals are particularly alluring) and horn-toting, big studio electrofunk ("Lovin' U"). In other words, it's another tidy collection of cuts.
Review: Madrid's prolific and versatile Manuel Costela seldom puts a foot wrong, regardless of what particular sub-genre of house and disco he turns his hand to. Here, the title track is a midtempo affair, built for White Isle play and characterised by thunderous, high-impact drums, fluttering keys and an assortment of haunting, buzzing synth drones. The Disco Funk Spinner Remix adds some even bigger stabs and will suit the more commercial floors while, elsewhere, 'Jump On The Middle' is a lavish, lazy groove topped with more of those raw synths and 'El Loco' has a more 'traditional' filter disco feel.
Review: Thunder Jam's latest release offers us a chance to casually wander around the "Edit Mind" of debutant producer Paul Older. It's an attractive place where loopy, filtered and delay-heavy disco-house revisions of obscure turn-of-the-80s cuts ("I Need Your Love") rub shoulders with Clavinet-sporting slabs of disco-funk/AOR disco fusion in an echo chamber filled with bell-bottom flares, hoary haircuts and flash-fried DJ effects ("Jump"). The corridors of Older's cranium also boast doors to P-funk-fired dancefloor shufflers ("The Magic") and bouncy, house style cut-ups of glassy-eyed Philly Soul numbers (EP highlight "You Are Perfect").
Review: Like his good friend and sometime studio buddy C Da Afro, J.B Boogie is firmly focused on good-times grooves and unfussy re-edits that put the demands of the dancefloor above all other considerations. They'll be plenty of smiling faces in the club if you drop the title track of his latest EP, a chunky, filter-sporting revision of an AOR disco/Balearic classic rich in blue-eyed soul vocals, Latin-tinged grooves, headline-grabbing bass and Flamenco guitar flourishes. He quickly switches focus on "I'll Be Good", a deliciously driving and low-slung rework of a heavy swamp funk workout blessed with hazy, ear-catching vocal samples and cut-glass disco strings, before whipping off his top and slinging his arms aloft via soaring disco re-edit "Feel It".
Review: If a track's gonna call itself 'The Grinder Funk' it had damn well better be rocking a fine line in low-slung funk sleaze... luckily for NFC, the title track here more than lives up to expectations, being a bass- and brass-driven affair that's just dying to soundtrack an entirely hypothetical 70s blaxploitiation flick of the same name. The accompanying 'Ghana Superstar' makes its presence known from the very outset with some absolutely killer space disco-style falls/downers, then develops into something of a musical smorgasbord featuring mariachi-like brass, Afrofunk beats/vox and plenty more of those wigged-out 70s analogue synth sounds.
Review: The late Tony Joe White's 70s/80s adventures in fusing blues-y swamp rock with disco and funk never met much success, and he's better known as a songwriter - he penned 'Rainy Night In Georgia', for instance. Here, though, 1983's 'Swamp Rap' becomes 'Country Rap', and the result is a slightly novelty-esque but truly distinctive-sounding funk slab. Fred Wesley's 'House Party' and The Chi-Lites' 'Bottoms Up' get similarly funked up as 'Gonna Have A Party' and 'Turn The House Down', respectively, while 'Other Sight' draws from sources unknown but has a go-go feel. 'Country Rap' is the one that'll really prick up ears on the dancefloor, though.
Review: Like Ronseal's quick-drying wood varnish, "Brazilian Edits" does "exactly what it says on the tin". It sees Muleke and Leo Mafra work their magic on two typically sunny and life-affirming Brazilian cuts of old. First up is the carnival-ready brilliance of "Sarava", a genuine rush of turn-of-the-'70s positivity blessed with righteous horn arrangements, funk-rock guitars, cheery male vocals and locked-in samba-disco drums. Arguably even better is "E Muita Raca", a tasty revision of a little-known P-funk era number rich in Parliament/Funkadelic style synths, Prince-ish guitar riffs, punchy horns and chant-along vocals. Two cuts guaranteed to get the party started: what's not to like?
Review: The team behind Thunder Jam is dreaming of a "Fantasy Fling". Given that the compilation is an expansive, 21-track affair (sorry), it would be safe to say that they're thinking of a steamy, all-action romance rather than a disappointing one-night stand. Musically, the cuts on offer tend towards the warm and loved-up, with Adata's dreamy deep house opener "Marlena Soul" and the glassy-eyed Balearic disco heat of Aure Zwins' "Long Way" setting the tone. Highlights include the loopy, filter-heavy bounce of Celestino's Lionel Richie-sampling "Rhythm", the twinkling, picturesque nu-disco cheeriness of Double F.O.G's "Bang Bao Boulevard", the synth-heavy boogie revivalism of "Fangkok" by Ivan Fabra and the low-slung dub disco-goes-jazz flex of Noil Rago's "J.Club".
Review: While Mexico's electronic music scene is arguably getting more press coverage than ever before, little has yet been written about off-the-radar duo Dark Punk Hippies. They've been bubbling under for some time, releasing exspanive EPs and epic singles for Spa in Disco. Now they've joined Thunder Jam, offering up a suitably sizable package that backs their original version of "Janko's Drug" - a pleasingly loose and elastic fusion of flute-laden Balearic bliss, lo-fi bleeps, acid-influenced funk-rock and squeezable, boogie style nu-disco flavours - with no fewer than ten titanic reworks. These range from the warm, deep and woozy flex of Situation's drowsy nu-disco interpretation and Kellini's killer, revivalist synth-funk take, to the deliciously low-slung vibe of Planet Jumper's trippy dub disco revision.
Review: Recently, long-serving scalpel fiend Rayko has been sharing top billing with pal James Rod on the decidedly eccentric Classics of Arrikitaun series. This outing on Thunder Jam - the Spaniard's first for the label, according to our resident nu-disco nerd - sees him hog the limelight via a quartet of synth-heavy '80s soul, boogie and electrofunk reworks. He begins in confident fashion via the smooth, dewy-eyed vocals, heavy synth bass and jaunty keyboard solos of "Complication", before heading further towards Jam and Lewis territory on the electric guitar solo-laden bounce of "Build Me a Bridge". Elsewhere, "Fascination" provides Jheri curls, fretless bass and delay-laden vocals by the skip-load, while fine closer "Wanna" is a dreamy, saucer-eyed rearrangement of a familiar favourite from 1982.
Review: More from Saskin S, a Norway-based producer who is fast becoming one of Thunder Jam's most reliable artists. Long Time To End begins with with the sweet, soul-flecked "Avenger Force", a P-funk era electrofunk jam given a subtle, 21st century makeover, before this S-man reaches for the filters to give a funk-fuelled '80s soul jam a rolling, mid-set tweak on "Extra Special". Even better is the skewed funk-goes-house shuffle of "Greenshaker", where horn and woodwind solos provide an exotic focal point. Elsewhere, he serves up an "Extended Dub" of rolling disco-boogie-meets-italo-disco number "The Chaplin Rockers" and dips into harder electrofunk territory via the ricocheting drums, booming sub-bass and thickset synths of "The Key Tone".
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