Back in stock: Disco/Re-Edits

Review: DJ, curator and producer Dave Lee (fka. Joey Negro) continues to celebrate his 30-odd year long career in music with his second curatorital comp release. The 'Produced With Love' series charts all of Lee's original productions in soulful house and disco, and this second edition includes choices songs by the likes of Destiny II, Leroy Burgess and Andreya Triana. Always collaborative and with effortless attention to funking detail, Lee brings it once again.

Review: We always feel that a one-sided 12" is a real sign that an artist are label are hugely happy with what they are seeing up. And Adam Goldstone has every right to feel that way frankly as his 'Edge of the Night' is a classic deep house sermon that will bring plenty of emotions to the fore when it is dropped, either in the dead of night or just as the sun is coming up one morning, much like a tune such as Ron & Chez's 'Morning Factory'. The smoky vocals are well-treated, the smeared pads bring the soul and the drums and cuddly and warm. Perfect.

Review: All funk lovers have long been dialed into the red hot heat served up on an endless basis by the Jalapeno label, Now it is to Flevans that they turn for another long player destined to warm you through this winter. There is an organic and naturalistic air to the sound pallets here that takes you into the great outdoors right from the opening track. Following that the tight stick work and jazzy chords, soulful vocals and rolling drums all make for a storytelling musical ride with highs, lows and plenty in between.

Review: When Danilo 'MCDE' Plessow and Bobby van Putten established their Space Grapes label last year, it was their stated intention to present 'the best in contemporary live dance music'. What they meant, we suspect, was releases like this debut album from van Putten's Another Taste combo - a four-piece whose colourful and sonically authentic sound rooted in boogie, 80s electrofunk and obscure, private press disco. The results are undeniably impressive, sounding something like a long-lost album from 1983 - complete with kaleidoscopic synths, soulful vocals and killer basslines - of the kind that dusty-fingered crate diggers consider a 'holy grail'. Highlights include the Plessow co-produced boogie brilliance of 'Anything You Want' and the funky bassline driven mid-tempo disco-soul of 'Time Is On My Side'.

Review: There could have been no better way to escape the Soviet than through the music of the Groove of ESSR compilation series which now returns with a second volume. This time Funk Embassy serves up 11 cuts from between 1973 and 1984 and they are a mix of dance floor-ready sounds and more pensive material for somewhere else. Most of these tunes are getting their first-ever release here and the 12" comes with a 30-page booklet featuring some great background as well as thoughts from some of the artists. The likes of likes Gilles Peterson and DJ Tahira played tunes from the first one which tells you how good this series is.

Review: On their debut album, 2016's the Tony Allen Experiments, Naples twosome Nu Guinea re-invented tracks by the legendary Afro-beat drummer as synth-heavy chunks of deep jazz-funk and nu-Balearica. For this follow-up - their first full length entirely made up of their own compositions - the duo serves up a set of jazz-funk, disco and boogie cuts rich in both their trademark colourful analogue synthesizer sounds and live instrumentation. It's a formula that guarantees a string of memorable highlights, from the sun-kissed peak-time brilliance of "Disco Sole" and rubbery, funk-fuelled "Je Vulesse" (a killer vocal number), to the wobbly downtempo trip of "A Voce E Napule" and Mizell Brothers fizz of closer "Parev Ajare", the album's most synthesizer-heavy cut.

Review: The 80s Japanese pop culture is back with the re-release of Toyama 'Penny' Hitomi's two popular albums. Among them, the 1983 album Next Door is a perfect blend of American and Japanese city pop, making it a must-listen for music lovers. The black vinyl pressing of this limited edition album is of high-quality Japanese import, bringing back the nostalgia of a classic era. This is the first time it has been released on wax since 1983, making it a rare and valuable addition to any music collection.