This is so soulful! Reposted on LOFIDREAMERS @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1307481172616596/

nu soul II

Psychosynthesis

Tropical Love

Free download at: https://ahmedsirour.com/track/3118716...

So, later this year will mark the 30th anniversary of the release of what is, arguably, #Sade's best album of all time, #LoveDeluxe. I bought the CD at Tower Records when it came out, back in '92, when I was 15 years old (yes, I was ahead of my years with impeccable musical taste, if I do say so lol).

Track for track, it's a solid album and truly a masterpiece, and I couldn't have imagined that I would one day have the musical ability to be able to not only replay the arrangement, if I wanted to, but that I would have the skills to also add my own arrangements to possibly the best track on the album–#CherishTheDay"– and create this alternate universe version where I give it a more 21st century modern/Hip Hop-ish beat while maintaining the original synths & guitar, but adding new Rhodes piano and choir synth chord progressions in two breakdowns, instead of one, and removing the original drums and bass line, replacing it my own chill groove to maybe give it some more sensuality/sexiness (especially in the second half of the second 8-bar breakdown, at the 3:37 mark...smoky, sensual, hypnotic harmonies to stand apart from the original's, which was sexy as well).

I hope you enjoy my take on this classic and please do let me know if you're feeling it, and please share with others who you know would love it as much as I did making it...and please subscribe because I'm definitely gonna be adding more content, if you all want more? 🤷🏾‍♂️

I mean...I've remade 2 songs from this album already (first one was "I Couldn't Love You More", which many radio stations had been putting in steady rotation over the past couple of years), and there still a few months left in 2022, so I wonder if I can knock out a few more, if not the rest of the album?? 🤔😉

#AhmedSirour

Cherish the Day (Ahmed Sirour Rework)

Sade - Cherish The Day (Ahmed Sirour Rework)

Following the success of the Yumi & The Weather E.P, We at XVI are delighted to welcome home one of our original family members, the mystic, elusive & relentlessly soulful Henry Wu with two beautifully crafted new tracks. 

Natural Complexion combines undeniable grooves with a vintage, lo-fi ambience, completed with Henry's vocals flowing seamlessly over the intertwined rhythms. On the flip side, Dutty Dub moves into jazz -infused broken beat territory, featuring dream -like synth waves washing over scattered drum patterns and some truly phenomenal keyboard playing. 

Released on February 24th.


Henry Wu- Dutty Double

Dreamy new jazz from Clear Path Ensemble. Perfect for a hot, humid day.  "Drumatix" is taken from their forthcoming on Soundway Records, "Solar Eclipse". 

Led by percussionist Cory Champion, Clear Path Ensemble bottles the energy of New Zealand’s bubbling new jazz scene and distills it into moody morsels of differing styles. From electric jazz to ambient, experimental, house and funk – it’s a DIY, jam-session attitude towards composition, as the band members freely cherry-pick from a vast orchard of influences.

Solar Eclipse

Exclusive Premiere: Clear Path Ensemble "Drumatix" (Soundway Records)

Old Light

“WWDAWAWG” is the second single from ‘Two Ticks Loose Bits’ – an upcoming EP compiling our favorite unreleased tracks from Royce Wood Junior's ‘No Two Blue Ticks’ album sessions.

Stream the single & pre-order the EP: smarturl.it/rwjwwd

Produced & Mixed by Royce Wood Junior

Written by Royce Wood Junior, Dan See, & Charlie Platt

Ross Hutchison - vocals
RWJ - backing vocals, acoustic guitar, keys, programming
Jamie Woon - backing vocals
Dan See - drums
Charlie Platt - piano

Engineered by RWJ and Alex “Lexxx” Dromgoole

Mastered by Kevin Tuffy @ AIR Studios

FSX-053-02 © 2022 Fresh Selects. Sounds like butter.

Two Ticks Loose Bits

Royce Wood Junior "What We Doing And Where Are We Going? (WWDAWAWG)"

Tracklist and download available here: http://blrrm.tv/2TxE4U

Henry Wu Trio Boiler Room London Live Set

Taken from the album 'Home' - due out in mid-February on Sound of Speed Records.

Culross Close are:

Eli Emmnauel - Bass
Hasani - Percussion & Incense
Anthony Kieron - Keys
Nathaniel Jiddu - Synthesizers
May Goode - Drums


Artwork c/o of Ears -  http://earstotheground.net/

Pre-order

Requiem + Reflections

flying

Mother Braintree Let Me Stay Beside You unissued 1973 soul kinsman

Taken from the debut Kamaal Williams LP 'The Return'
Buy / stream here: www.smarturl.it/kw-thereturn

The Return 

Kamaal Williams - High Roller

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. 

There has also been a breakout project from drummer Jonny Drop - the album Sub Plot gained massive support and love from BBC Radio 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne. While keys-man Dave Koor has been busy playing shows with Gilles Peterson favourite Hector Plimmer, Shaun Escoffery, and Ego Ella May, improvising with Yussef Dayes (Yussef Kamaal) and Nubya Garcia, releasing music as Deoke and collaborating with label-mate Scrimshire on their Modified Man exploration. 

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.

Murmuration

Miles Away

Yussef Kamaal - String of Light (Live @ Jazz Cafe) ::: Mixing / Mastering (2016)

@abasemusic delivers groove and sateen sweetness on this eight-minute stunner via @cosmiccompositions.

Read more: http://www.stampthewax.com/2018/11/30/premiere-abase-align-feat-wayne-snow/
Listen on Youtube: http://bit.ly/abase-snow

Listen on Youtube

Àbáse - Align feat Wayne Snow (STW Premiere)

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Far Out Recordings proudly presents two albums of previously unheard Azymuth demo recordings from 1973-75

Since their debut album release in 1975, Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world’s greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock ‘n’ roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature ‘Samba Doido’ (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid.
But before they became Azymuth, Jose Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil.

Bertrami was also contracted as an arranger and songwriter at some the biggest labels of the era: Polydor, Philips, Som Livre, and EMI being just a few. Azymuth’s name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music - from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward.Any spare moment in which they weren’t in sessions and writing music for other artists, they would be carving out their own sound.

These previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami’s home studio in the Laranjeiras district of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world that sounded anything like them, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, and told in effect that the music was ‘wrong’.

One of the demos ‘Manhã’ would be picked up by Som Livre and Azymuth released their seminal debut album in 1975. Throughout the late seventies and eighties, the group released a series of now classic albums for Milestone Records, before taking an indefinite hiatus to pursue their individual careers.
When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Joe recalls how he was “blown away by the freedom and intensity of the music, as well as the genius of the ideas musically.” Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, ‘Prefacio’ would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996).

Along with ‘Manhã’ and ‘Prefacio’, only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form.

On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros and Conti were realising at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth’s earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.

Kamaal Williams - High Roller

Black Focus Records

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