New Album 'Curiosities' Available November 12
<a href="https://bastardjazz.bandcamp.com/album/curiosities">BUY ALBUM</a> (CD, Vinyl, Digital)
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Bastard Jazz Recordings is proud to present the sophomore album Curiosities by New Zealand multi- instrumentalist and producer Lord Echo (aka Mike Fabs). An enticing sonic excursion that effortlessly transcends genre and geography, the release finds Echo flexing his dual-mastery of 60's production techniques and modern dancefloor aesthetics, while also highlighting the vocal prowess of his soulful compatriots through a flowing blend of boogie-laced Funk, disco-primed Dub, futuristic Soul, and timeless African rhythms.

Fabs, known worldwide for his production work with NZ’s biggest Reggae export The Black Seeds, drew a groundswell of excitement around his debut solo album Melodies in late 2010. The independent release became a cult classic strictly through word-of-mouth, championed by tastemakers like Gilles Peterson (who played it repeatedly on his BBC Radio 1 show), Oliver Wang (Soulsides) and Richard Dorfmeister. Re-issues of the album soon followed in Japan and Europe, with vinyl copies quickly becoming a hot commodity among discerning collectors around the globe. Echo was introduced to Bastard Jazz’s DJ DRM in 2011 (via Detroit producer Recloose), and a limited 7” vinyl release on the Brooklyn-based imprint soon followed in 2012, precipitating this full length release with the label.

Curiosities picks up right where Melodies left off, with the sun-drenched psychedelic dub sounds of tracks like “Bohemian Idol” (featuring vocals by Toby Laing of Fat Freddy's Drop), and the jerky funk vibes of cuts like “Digital Haircut” and “Street Knowledge”. The album provides a wealth of DJ fodder, with forward thinking 70s-inspired disco tunes such as “Molten Lava” (featuring the soaring vocals of Leila Adu), as well as analog Afro-infused burners like “What Is That Feeling” and “Put It In My Head” (complemented by the golden-voiced Mara TK of Electric Wire Hustle fame). Down-home spiritual jazz/electronic meanderings ("Ghost Hands", “Arabesque”) provide a counterpoint to Echo's driving cover-version of the Pharoah Sanders & Leon Thomas classic “The Creator Has a Master Plan”. His inspiring take on the track is uplifted by the soulful singing of Lisa Tomlins (who's notable vocals on Echo’s rendition of Sister Sledge’s “Thinking Of You” made it a standout hit from his Melodies album).

The finely-tuned collaborations throughout Curiosities underscore Lord Echo's pivotal position in the thriving New Zealand music scene. "I generally only work with people I know quite well personally", says Echo humbly. That personal and organic approach to creating his music is revealed as the album unfolds, layer by delectable layer. "I made this record primarily with DJs in mind," he continues. "They are generally people who really love music and are often obsessed with various aspects of it. I'm not making music for people for whom it's just some background noise in their lives, I'm making music for people for whom it IS their lives. And for better or worse, I guess I am one of those people."

A diverse, yet grounded LP chock full of head-turning sounds, Curiosities further pushes Lord Echo’s repertoire into the realm of the inimitable, and is sure to pique the interest of discerning music lovers from down-under to the big apple.

Buy on iTunes

Lord Echo - Street Knowledge

From the album Synthesizer and Percussion 1974

Alan Hawkshaw & Brian Bennet - Mile high swinger (Version A) 1974

Free The Robots (Alpha-Pup, LA) remix BT3 tune from their latest LP - TOAST 

http://butteringtrio.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS2fGLLERDE

TOAST LP

Buttering Trio - No Joke (Free The Robots Remix)

📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀
📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀📀

#lofi #boombap #ambient

soul sample demos! ep - mix of jazz soul & funk samples from 1970's & 1980's united states

sound design, production, mixing, & mastering via - stracct

samples are used

artwork - stracct

contact me if you are interested in using any of my beats/instrumentals for whatever reason.

for the love of you! [stracct] [90bpm F#minor] [soundcloud exclusive]

Fragments of Us

A smooth, laid-back soul groove with a confident slow swagger. Warm bass, gentle shuffle drums, velvet Rhodes chords and subtle wah-guitar accents create an effortless night-time vibe. The vocals move between spoken soul and warm melodic phrases, celebrating presence, breath, and inner glow. The track isn’t about showing off — it’s about being the groove. A calm confidence that you don’t need to explain. A vibe you feel in the body before the mind catches up.

Souling

"I love The Expansions their futuristic leanings inject new life into the form. Fresh material!" Ian Merchant (Black Acre)

“Exudes all the qualities I cherish most in music, warmth, integrity and a dedication to the groove… it’s a hard road to travel when you step in the footprints of giants, The Expansions are treading that path with ease and assurance.” Patrick Forge
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When The Expansions self released their first single in 2013, the laid-back jazz funk of Lavender, it quickly gained strong support from soul and rare-groove aficionados including Kenny Dope, Dom Servini, Patrick Forge and Andy Smith. A run of shows followed and before long, when someone was asking if there was a soul-jazz band around to play with, “The Expansions” was the answer. 

Although this popularity meant a hiatus in releasing music, the band have been constantly busy, playing around Europe with legendary British-Ghanaian soul singer, Andrew Ashong and the exceptional, upcoming talent Connie Constance. 

But always, The Expansions has remained a central focus and the true home of these four jazz and soul lovers, with occasional trips out to the country to form ideas and practice new music for the eventual album. 

Murmuration, recorded over three days at Big Noise in Southend, is constructed of single takes, with minimal overdubs, as the band attempt to capture the feeling and energy they create live. 

Debut single Breakthrough introduced the insanely catchy but deeply soulful blend of synths and groove, but here on the album that is explored to the fullest with longer breakdowns and more expansive, experimental solos. Pocket 5 displays the, possibly unexpected, influences of broken beat and almost combative rhythm playing – particularly in the complex guitar and keys breakdown where Koor and O’Keefe layer conflicting time signatures and battle to ride it out to the heavy drum return. 

Cannonball brings warm mellowness that delicately evolves through beats, touching on bossas alongside their fundamental hip-hop sensibilities. But even here there is a raucous zenith before the band sublimely recede into the silence of the a-side ending. 

Colossal album highlight Ivory Mountain is truly an epic. Evoking moments of 4Hero, there is a lightness of groove in the first half of this soulful exploration. But at the halfway point, all restraint is let go as a live string section joins the four quarters of the band for three glorious minutes of soulful disco. Evoking sounds of Quincy Jones, George Benson and Johnny Hammond, all the way through to a beautifully cacophonous finale. 

Dragonfly undoubtedly reflects on the work of Herbie Hancock and is the most direct throwback to the band’s earlier work, which is a welcome marker of how far they have come. A quintessential jazz funker. 

The album closes with the thoughtful and introverted shuffle of Miles Away. In the final eight minutes of Murmuration, The Expansions allow space and time to take precedence, with once-more-restrained peaks and developments. It becomes clear though, that the band cannot resist one last explosive finale, as they rise with screeching synths, strings and dubs for a perfect race to the finish line. 

You can hear the influences of Idris Muhammad, Grover Washington, even parallels with South London peers Yussef Kamaal and Ruby Rushton. But The Expansions have tirelessly worked to create a sound of their own and are very proud, along with label Albert’s Favourites, to finally share it.

Cannonball (Murmuration Preview)

The Expansions - Cannonball (Radio Edit)

From Cochemea's debut album, All My Relations, out now on Daptone Records.

LP/CD /Digital:
http://dapt.one/Cochemea 

Cochemea Gastelum is coming home to connect with his roots. After nearly 15 years of touring the world with Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, the saxophonist offers a deeply personal album of jazz and indigenous-influenced rhythms. All My Relations is 10 tracks of mesmerizing and spiritually ascendant instrumentation.

A California native with Yaqui and Mescalero Apache Indian ancestry, Cochemea grew up surrounded by music - both his parents were musicians, and they gave their son a heavy name meaning “they were all killed asleep.” Cochemea has spent much of his diverse musical career – as a soloist, musical director, composer and ensemble player – exploring and iterating on roots music, and All My Relations is a capstone meditation on his own ancestry.

Follow Cochemea:
www.facebook.com/Cochemea/
www.instagram.com/cochemea

All My Relations

Cochemea - Al-Mu'tasim

The Cranes were one of Uganda’s most popular teenage bands in the 1970’s. Founded in 1965, they metamorphosed at the end of the 1970’s into the Afrigo Band which is still, up to today, the number one band in the country. What’s love and Joy, both written by singer and guitarist Tony Senkebejje, appeared in 1974 on the only Cranes’ LP ‘Top Ten Hits’.
When the album hit the record stores in Kampala, bad luck had befallen The Cranes. A month before the recording of the album their bass player Jessy Kasirivu was killed because of President Idi Amin’s amorous association with his girlfriend. Senkebejje, scared for his life, fled to Kenya, only returning to Uganda 15 years later. The song What’s love describes how confusing love can be to a young soul and is partly inspired by Kasirivu’s death. Joy is a love song for Senkebejje’s wife Rachel who followed him to Kenya and who has been singing lead and playing guitar with him in their Simba Sounds Band ever since. Both songs feature prominently in the documentary Bwana Jogoo: the ballad of Jessy Gitta (2019 – 70 min – UG/NL/FR) which investigates the death of Jessy Kasisirvu at the hands of Idi Amin‘s State Research agents. Bwana Jogoo, directed by Dutch filmmaker Michiel van Oosterhout, showcases many great 1970’s songs from Uganda while letting Uganda’s musicians of yesteryears recount fond memories of one of their own, Jessy Kasirivu. These are the folks that worked and socialized with Jessy and knew him better than most. Their accounts of the events that led to Jessy’s disappearance are riveting and haunting. It lays bare a hitherto unexplored subject and one deserving of serious interrogation and scholarship – the naked power of authoritarianism and sexual predation.

The Cranes

The Cranes What's Love/Joy New Afro7 single - snippets

If Only feat. Ruby Wood

Smokey off-beat quest for love, a bouncing bass coated with soft electric piano stylings. The portuguese poetry of Minadosom is sung beautifully by Tita Lima, brasilian star with a magnetic voice. A perfect soundtrack for making out on the beach.

Beijos Seus Labios W/ Tita Lima

Baron Rétif & Concepción Perez