Another common denominator is that they both feature one amazing guest vocalist on two equally amazing tracks. The enchanting Bajka performs the vocals on ‘soundtrack for the sound eye’, adding extra depth and mystery to the in itself already cinematic backdrop of dalindèo’s orchestra. For Timo Lassy, golden boy Jose James pours some dark syrupy soul out over the jazz grooves laid down by Lassy and fellow musicians.

But don’t think that the only good thing about these albums is the vocal addition of two jazz greats. Dalindeo does a great job of scoring unseen dark jazz scenes with authentic sounds that are fresh and youthful at the same time. This also applies to Timo Lassy, albeit in his own genre of swinging uptempo jazz.

Being more of a funk/soul head myself I am not able to pin the genre, but I do know that of the similar artists I am familiar with Lassy is on par with Benjamin Hermann as far as I’m concerned. Also, I definitely like José James better on this than on his latest solo offering. The band that springs to mind as a reference for Dalindèo, maybe too obvious, is Cinematic Orchestra, sans electronics. But this should be taken as a compliment!

I can be very short about this band. If you like raw funk then this is a no-brainer. Buy this music! There are two shiny discs of black gold that harbour every deliciously raw tune these funksters have ever put out and it’s all good!

The tracks I think stand out most are ‘Kick Out The Jams’, ‘Greenbacks’ and ‘Red Raw’. The two vocal tunes on the Deep Street Soul LP are available as a 7″ release, but although these two tracks do deserve to be put out as a single, I’m afraid to say that you’d be better off to just buy the LP. The album includes the two vocal tunes, but also a slew of instrumental deep raw funk that would make the Meters proud (although they might think it all to sound a bit too punky). The track ‘Red Raw’ is just a sublime piece of real raw instrumental deep funk. There is nothing I can think of that could improve this song more. It’s one of those songs that is guaranteed to have people come up to a DJ and ask what that tune is. Hear for yourself after the fold!

Deep Street Soul – Deep Street Soul by Freestyle Records

All other tracks come close to this quality and I couldn’t point out any filler tracks if my life depended on it. There’s some uptempo tracks (which are good), some slow tracks (equally good) and some medium tempo tracks (still just as good). The only boring thing about this LP might be its consistency. This disc consistently rocks in the most funky kind of way. And to prove that this band will probably be here for a while to please our funky ears & dancing feet in the future, Freestyle has collected all their previous material, remastered it and put it out as an EP.

It’s my humble opinion that this is the best deep funk album of the year, and I’m very glad that Freestyle picked these funky-ass australians up and gave them a proper vinyl release.  So what exactly can you buy to help this band keep making righteously funky pearls? There’s a 12″ of collected previous releases called the ‘Chilli Fried EP’, a new 7″ with two vocal tracks off the LP and last but not least the ‘Deep Street Soul LP’ (released november 16th). Buy them all at Freestyle’s ‘own’ webshop KudosRecords, or at your favourite vinyl shack down the road.

If you’d like to read more, please consider the excellent reviews at MonkeyBoxing.com: Kick Out the Jams/Greenbacks 7″, Deep Street Soul LP.

Wrong.

Yes, this album is full of samples. Yes, it is full of funky breakbeats. And hell yes, it will work on the dance floor. But NO it is not that simple.

This Danish beat master is an experienced beat smith, using sounds known and unknown to create his own style of Nu Funk breaks, forging old & new to work together as if they have always been.

Some of the tracks on this album may already be known to you, as BadboE has previously released about half of the tracks on GoodGroove, home to Nu Funk & Funk Break mash-up’s finest releases. And if you want the grooves to be on vinyl, you’d have to get those 12″es, since this album is only released on CD or Digital format.

BadboE – Break The Funk by auditorydesigns

Highlights on this album for me are the previously released ‘Loose Your Funky Self’, ‘Funky Intro’, ‘The Original Groover’. Some tracks have the problem of having too well known samples, like the rework of Rescue me. Although it does a good job of updating the track to the 21st century in terms of club music, it is a bit spun out too much, from a mere 2:50 to a full 5:09, making it slightly too repetitive. Another ‘down side’ is that the source material could still rock a dance floor on its own, making such a rework nice but not essential. Don’t be afraid though, not many tracks suffer from a too well-known basis, plus It may bother me but for many people the track will probably sound fine. I’m hard to please!

In the end, as an album this set of tracks do please me and it was a pleasure to have to listen to it for this review. A few more tracks that are worth a mention are ‘Break the Blues’ featuring some aching soul vocals on a bouncy mid-tempo blues break and ‘Spread the Words’ featuring some original vocals by Linn Lavinsky from Phat Old Mamas. The only other original vocal is provided by MC Sens One, who rides the beat of ‘Funky Medley’ with skill even though I can’t always understand what he’s saying.

Too round up this review, it may be too obvious to mention, but this kind of music is best listened to on a good bass heavy system, although the music still sounds great from my teeny macBook speakers. This album deserves a dance floor, but is also well equipped to provide a good listening experience. Unlike some other tracks that are only interesting as long as you can spaz out to them, BadboE has managed to create songs that can also be listened to and enjoyed on a musical level.

As a bonus, BadboE just released a mix for the Australian radio StraightUp, which you can download from here (right-click & save as).

The cd release is postponed till September 28th. It will be available on Kudos and Juno. But you can already buy it digitally at a few stores, sor pick your favourite digital grooves provider: Junodownload, Beatport, DjDownload, Amazon, SoulSeduction, Play.Com & The BBP Website.

And quite a lovely business it is. If this album were only to be judged by its cover, it would already rank high in my all time favourites. The cut-and-paste feel of the artwork and the specific images chosen by Symon Warwick are an excellent companion to the warm deep sounds on this LP. As on Quantic’s previous ‘band’ release Tropidélico (2LP back in stock now!), the sleeve excellently reflects the multitude of styles, referred to as “a multi-cultural patchwork” by its press release. Although I must say that the phrase does not fully do justice to the excellent production and signature Quantic compositions, which make this one of the most coherent Quantic band albums I have heard.

Quantic and His Combo Bárbaro

One of the things I feared when I first heard about this project, was that it would be another step away from the raw funk and soul that I so love in the first two Quantic Soul Orchestra albums, and felt he was moving away from in the Tropidélico sound. However, the drums are still manned by long time Quantic collaborator Malcolm Catto (drummer for the Heliocentrics a.o.), and there are some arguably funky raw tunes on the album in the collaborations with soul crooner Kabir. He delivers his raw vocals, brimming with emotion & experience, to Linda Morena and I Just Fell In Love Again. The latter has a heavy drum part that pushes the track forward at a relentless pace without spinning out of control. Much of this is due to Holland’s excellent production work, so that the drums are clearly in your face (ear), without taking away the attention from the vocals and other parts, making this my dance floor favourite of this album.

Other notable highlights are more experimental meetings like Albela where indian vocals are married to the south american grooves. And there is no reason to file for divorce; the piano work beautifully underscoring and assimilating the vocals into the Caribbean grooves. Another nice swinging rhythm is employed in Un Canto a Mi Tierra, which has a girl’s vocals singing over the instruments that groove their way into your brain. I can almost see the sunny village square where this song should have a video shot, happy locals and all (and ofcourse they have, see the micro site here). There are also some instrumental cinematic songs (Más Pan, Undelivered Letter, New Morning, Canção Do Deserto, Arianita) that make you see and almost smell the hills and landscape of Cali when you close your eyes, as if traveling through the hillsides by bus. It makes me long for a vacation that much harder. Al in all this is just a great release that deserves all the attention it has been getting and will definitely stay in high rotation on my various music players.

Since I’ve been pushing forward finalizing this review for way too long, I am now a happy owner of the double LP & the Linda Morena single, and Tru Thoughts have in the mean time even dedicated a micro-site to this release, containing additional videos to the previously releases B+ trailer and a full album preview (be aware that the sound starts to play immediately). The full press release can be found in the archives of ParisDJs.com.

Keep your eyes peeled for more funky Tru stuff this summer courtesy of Kylie Auldist, with a new killer 7″ (juli 13th) followed by a new album (august 10th), produced by Lanu and backed by The Bamboos. Other recent Tru Thoughts releases like Lizzy Parks’ all acoustic album ‘This and That‘ (all new material) and Domu’s collection of ‘One Off’s & B-sides‘ deserve some attention too.

Just in: Quantic and His Combo Bárbaro UK/France tour:

Aug 8^th – Big Chill Festival – Saturday headliner, Castle Stage

Aug 9^th – Brecon International Jazz Festival, Brecon Beacons National Park

Aug 28 – Rendezvous L’Erdre Festival, Nantes, France

Aug 29 – Shambala Festival, Kelmarsh, Northamptonshire

Aug 30 – Beachdown Festival, Brighton

Sept 1 – Root Music Festival, Upper Mill Civic Hall, Oldham

Sept 3 – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Liverpool

Sept 4 - Roundhouse, London

Sept 5 - O2 Academy, Bristol

Sept 6 - Electric Picnic Festival, Ireland

In short, let’s just say I definitely  like this album. generally I like the chaotic, beats driven tracks best. Flevans has a knack for producing tracks that capture the chaos of everyday life, while still being very enjoyable and melodic. As a result there is a diverse range of ‘devils’ that you can hear reflected in the many styles and moods on this album. There’s chaos, uptempo, upbeat, downbeat, sunshine, variation, rain, sadness, peace, joy, etcetera. Just like in life.

For me personally however, the order of the tracks could be better. The tracks featuring  Shona Foster could have been nice resting points for the album, but I feel they are a bit out-of-place. It can be argued that life is just as unorganised though, and I guess this kind of preference varies from person to person. And while the album can feel a bit inconsistent in tempo and mood, the production is very good. Analog sounds play nice with their synthesized counterparts to create layers of interaction that fold and weave together perfectly to create one consistent sound image thoughout the album. I just realised that the album image is a good reflection of that: all kinds of devils that are intertwined and pointing outwards to explore life.

To summarise and get back to business: Flevans manages to get a fair bit of plays thanks to the more uptempo joints and his excellent production skills and will probably even rank among my favourites this year.

Originally I aspired to do a full track-by-track review, but since there are a lot of sources to get your Flev’ on, I’ll just end with a list of links to Flevans related stuff below.

• Official Flevans.co.uk
• buy 27 Devils @ etchshop CD or mp3 download
• Tru Thoughts profile
• Myspace
• Twitter
• Last.fm
• 15 min. video interview on getcloser.com
• Flevans DJ chart on Juno (an excellent selection of tracks)
• ParisDJs.com album info
• Exclusive mix for ParisDJs.com

The limited edition Vinyl EP + CD album already sold out its 500 copies, and the CD album is availble to order from etchshop since April 27th. The official release date was postponed by two weeks to May 5th, so let’s jump on the bandwagon of praise for Stonephace and write yet another review.

For those who are wondering if it is any good, the answer is: yes, the album is quite good. The thing is actually very bloody good. For people who like their jazz dirty and smokey, the sounds of this LP remind me of Cinematic Orchestra on acid or stoned like shrimps (or both), with some extra fuzz & grit added. Beware though, the trippy drug association obviously failed to impair these lads’ musical skills, which means they can all be heard laying down some killer chops.

The videos released alongside this project are a perfect match for the trippy beats & melodies that can already be considered quite psychedelic in its own right. Watch all of them on the Tru Thoughts YouTube channel, who have also added some live videos. After having watched those, I guess the only correct conclusion can be the following: not only will you have to scrape out your wallet to buy the album, but their gigs cannot be missed either.

I’d say this is one of Tru Thoughts strongest releases of the year, especially in the category of artists that I had never heard of (in this case because they did not exist in this formation yet). I mean, the next Quantic album (under the guise Quantic And His Combo Bárbaro) will undoubtedly be very good, but I saw that one coming. The same goes for the much postponed Kinny album that finally saw a release recently. In conclusion: these guys, although most of them already have a lengthy recording history, I did not anticipate them to drop such a great album. But I really dig their music and as a collector I am slapping myself in the head for not being in time to grab one of the 500 Vinyl EP’s.

Praise Out!

Thanks to colleagues RundFunk, I can point you all to check out the new album by dutch hammond funk group The Rare Groove Orchestra. Listen to the new tracks on their myspace, or a compilation of tracks in this RundFunk blog post. Higly recommended!

Kidkanevil (last.fm / myspace)has a new album out (‘Back up man, I’m a scientist‘), and to celebrate that, Cargo is giving away his old album for free (the slept on ‘Problems And Solutions‘).

by the way, the 6ix Toys album is also due to be released soon, to listen to some snippets click the pic!

Check it all here: http://www.soulbounce.com/soul/2008/10/got-the-hunger-for-alice-russells-pot-of-gold.php

This will be great, I’m sure. This is one of the most higly anticipated albums of 2008 for me! Also go buy some tickets for the Alice Russell concert in Paradiso, you won’t be disappointed.

To be released soon: Mr. Confuse (myspace) – Feel The Fire CD/2LP – Légègere Recordings – September 2008. Some people may already know Mr. Confuse from his 12″ ‘Lookout Weekend’, featuring a grooving remix by my all time favourite producer, Lack of Afro. Now he returns with a full album release, and from the reactions I’ve heard this is a winner! This is not pure raw funk, but a really well produced album with non stop grooving tracks, most of which will make you dance. Lookout Weekend, here comes Mr. Confuse!