Review: In an industry where the term 'veteran' is bandied about far too freely, Colin Curtis is the real deal! His DJing career goes all the way back to legendary Northern Soul club The Golden Torch in the late 60s. In the 70s, he was a resident at Blackpool Mecca alongside Ian Levine, where he became one of the first DJs to introduce the more modern sound of jazz-funk to the scene. By the mid-80s he'd become an early UK champion of house, too, but these days it's on the jazz-dance scene that he's most revered - and here he serves up a 26-track connoisseur's collection that shows why. Ranging from straight-up jazz and soul to soulful house and leaning heavily towards the Afro- and Latin-flavoured, some of these cuts are recent offerings, some date back as far as the 70s, but on jazz-dance floors, all will go down a treat.
Review: It's been slowly drip-fed to us over a 10-month period but now here at last is the full album. On 'Something Like That', Jalapeno bosses Skeewiff celebrate 25 years in the game by paying tribute to some of the music that's inspired them, delivering generally very faithful but also very accomplished reworks of classic tracks by artists ranging from The Winstons and Jimmy Smith to Dick Dale and Herb Alpert. New additions to the roster on this final version include Nancy Sinatra's 'These Boots Are Made For Walking', Muppets 'Mah Na Mah Na', Mel Tormé's Mod club standard 'Coming Home Baby' and, just to prove they're not taking themselves TOO seriously, Boots Randolph's 'Yakety Sax' - better known to most as the 'Benny Hill' theme.
Review: They've yet to make as much of an impact in the northern hemisphere but Melbourne-based outfit Mildlife are big news Down Under - their last (second) album 'Automatic' went Top 10 nationally in 2020, and won the ARIA award for Best Jazz Album to boot. Now they're back with long player #3, 'Closer', and it showcases a sound that's hard to pin down, with the album as a whole fusing elements of jazz-funk/jazz-fusion, Balearica, cosmic disco, psychedelic pop and modern indie, and even straying close to ambient territory on the title track. With the tempo seldom rising above walking pace ('Musica' being the only exception), there are no obvious dancefloor moments here - instead, it's an album that's best served whole, when in a mellower frame of mind...
Review: Native Transmissions hails from Birmingham and describes his sound as "lo-fi, house and anything in-between". We're definitely at the lo-fi end of that spectrum here, as he serves up five numbered mid/downtempo jams that range from the dusty, looping and Balearic-tinged (see 'Palette 01' with its spoken "there's nothing like a Rhodes" vocal sample and the lightly chipmunk'd 'Palette 03') to the more overtly jazz-leaning (see 'Palette 02' and, most especially, the ivory-sprinkled 'Palette 05'). The mood throughout is introspective, at times verging on melancholy, so club play is probably out of the question, but the EP as a whole makes for a pleasing and rewarding (home) listen.
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