Out now, Mother Tongue's 'Message is Love'.

Vinyl: https://www.rushhour.nl/record/vinyl/message-love
Bandcamp: https://rushhourmusic.bandcamp.com/album/message-is-love

The United Kingdom has long been an ardent supporter and consumer of African-American music. Dating back to the electrifying earliest performances of blues artists like Big Bill Broonzy during the early 1950s – an influence on Eric Clapton and John Lennon – right through to the dawn of Chicago house and onwards. In fan clubs, like the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society, started by soul writer Dave Godin, to the numerous fan magazines that have documented dance music culture from Blues & Soul to Mixmag, there has been an extended obsession with black music culture.

This lineage continued into the house era, our generation’s defining dance genre, and one with which British producers were swift to adopt. This record is a prime example of this. Although Mother Tongue was a one-off project, its history is rooted in this long-standing culture stretching back decades. The main man behind Mother Tongue was a drummer and record producer named Richie Stevens. Stevens was steeped in music and the industry, thanks to his father, John Stevens, also a professional drummer. Stevens senior played in numerous jazz ensembles during the 1960s and onwards, including performing with Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and was a session player with John Martyn (among numerous others) during Martyn’s finest period (it’s John’s drumming you can hear on ‘Big Muff’).

His son, Richie, was playing professionally while still a teenager for the Dennis Bovell Dub Band and has subsequently backed everyone from Tina Turner and Simply Red to Hugh Masekela and George Clinton. He is also a long-term collaborator with Boy George. But the story of Mother Tongue begins with a band called Well Red. This group, effectively a studio creation by Richie and his then manager Martin Poole, recruited vocalist Lorenzo Hall, a fixture on the London reggae scene and sold the concept to Virgin Records. Well Red yielded two albums – Motion and Respect Due – but never really got the crossover success their songs perhaps deserved. “Virgin were very supportive of us,” recalls Poole, today. “They gave us a lot of money. They pumped money into it, and it never quite paid off, but we did okay. We recouped and got to make a second album with George Clinton. It was a good move, recording with him. It did us a lot of good here and in America. We did pretty well in the US. We were very well-supported over there.”

This same team, working in a tiny studio near Richie’s house in Wood Green, north London, called The Watershed, produced ‘Message Is Love’. It features the vocals of Syn-Dee (Sindy Finn) and Lovebase (Louise Porter), who co-wrote the track with Richie and Alan Lane, another Stevens collaborator, and Ian ‘Spy’ Austin, who’d previously played in the same reggae band, The Instigators, as Lorenzo Hall from Well Red. “Remember it well,” says Martin Poole. “We were just writing it there and then in the studio. It was me, Richie, Spy, and I think Syn-Dee was there as well. When I got home later, Richie played it to me over the phone and I said, ‘That just sounds brilliant,’ from how we'd started it off, you know?” Thanks to their experience in the studio with Well Red, they managed to produce a song that has the timeless feel of all good music.

Mother Tongue was the opening track on a compilation called On The Loose Volume 1 on their own Furious Fish Records. Every track on the album, despite having different artist credits, was done by Stevens and Poole, often using a rotating cast of characters that had also appeared on ‘Message Of Love’. Although it did not sell especially well at the time, it’s become a collector’s item over the years. This is the first time Mother Tongue has appeared as a 12-inch single, a long overdue (but very welcome) happening.

(Notes by Bill Brewster)

Mother Tongue - Message Is Love

Telephones - Blaff

Edit of New Musik´s gem of music called Warp.

New Musik - Warp - ILOEDIT

Switch

DJ Fett Burger & Jayda G - NYC Party Track

Dekmantel   and   Worldwide   FM-affiliated   DJ   Esa takes  Daymé Arocena's  steady-swaying, lighters-in-the-air   moment   to   more   uptempo   territories.   Propped   up   by   an   ‘80s   drum   machine   bounce,   soft-dappled   synths swirl   around   an   extremely   well-executed   xylophone   melody.   As   a   set   of   remixes,   they   achieve   no   mean   feat:   flipping   a melancholy   ballad   to   an   all-out   party   banger.   On   Eleggua,   Esa   takes   a   more   esoteric   angle   –   a   slow-build,   synths-and-bleeps chugger,   Daymé’s   distinctive   exaltations   are   the   track’s   driving   force.   

This   3-track  12”   is   another   impressive   effort   from   the   South African   DJ   sure   to   feature   heavily   in   clubs   worldwide.

Out on Brownswood 10th of November 2017

Buy Vinyl

Daymé Arocena - Como (Esa's Havana Synth Mix)

remix of anthony shakir for rush hour, out noooowww.


Anthony Shakir - Detroit State of Mind (SDC's Pulsating Alien Mass Mix)

“Eye Contact” is the World’s first look at Detroit’s Symptoms of Love. Ryan Spencer (of Freakish Pleasures) and Ben Christensen (co-head of Sector 7G) display affection for their community through 3 tracks crafted in Hamtramck, Michigan. Auxiliary percussion and a plethora of classic synths makeup these sludgy, intuitive, melody saturated disco hits. Sticking with the theme of community, featured musicians include Antonio Manzari and Paul Taylor.

https://soundcloud.com/symptomsoflove
Digital: https://sobomtl.bandcamp.com/album/eye-contact-digi
Physical: https://clone.nl/item58105.html

SOBO009 - Symptoms of Love - "Eye Contact"

Pender Street Steppers Productions (PSSP) proudly presents a sweet new double single. Please enjoy and thanks for everything.

https://penderstreetsteppers.bandcamp.com/album/our-time
https://moodhut.ffm.to/pss-ourtime

1 - Falling (Vocal)
2 - Falling (Dub)
3 - Our Time (Vocal)
4 - Our Time (Dub)

Our Time

MH023 - Pender Street Steppers - Our Time

Listen here to the exclusive GROOVE-Premiere of @red-rackem 's track „In Love Again", released  on vinyl on the 11th of December.

Read our introduction here: https://bit.ly/3qQ08DK

In Love Again

Red Rack'em - In Love Again

PRE-ORDER: https://zeitgeistfreedomenergyexchange.bandcamp.com/album/kreuzberg-kix-vol-1

Whilst the club setting may feel detached from many of us at this time, Secretsundaze’s forthcoming release, courtesy of the Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange, will transport you back to the depths of the dancefloor’s energy. A three track EP which is sustained by Ziggy Zeitgeist’s rhythmic consistency on the drums – his scintillating live performance at Church of Sound in August 2019 caught the eyes of the label, leading to the fruition of this project.

His sonically ambidextrous ear has culminated in this compelling piece of work. Having met Berlin-based artist Wayne Snow at a record shop in Neukölln, the pair started jamming together at a converted office space in a building that was attached to a techno club. Their afterhours sessions were mixed with spontaneous trips to the club, allowing Wayne’s soulful vocals and Ziggy’s broken drum patterns to seamlessly merge with the darker, more heavy textures of the club environment.

Wayne’s silky offering on Something Special allows the serenading seven-and-a-half-minute meditation to unravel gradually, enchanting the dancer with its harmonious house beat, accompanied alongside interweaving melodic layers, from Finn Rees on keys, that build its trance.

SECRET030

Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange + Wayne Snow - Something Special

Welcome to Brownswood Recordings, the London-based indie label from globe trotting purveyor of all sounds soulful and inspired, Gilles Peterson.

Daymé Arocena - Como (Esa's Havana Synth Mix)

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