Out the Door

Free Download: hopestreetrecordings.com/dawn

Artist: Emma Donovan & The PutBacks
Album: Dawn
Format: LP/CD/Digital
AU Release Date: Nov 7 2014
UK Release Date: Nov 10 2014
US Release Date: Nov 11 2014

Acclaimed indigenous vocalist Emma Donovan and Melbourne rhythm combo The PutBacks come together to bring you Dawn, an LP of hard hitting and heartfelt soul songs telling stories of grief, struggle and redemption. Dawn is a gritty, uniquely Australian record, simultaneously classic and contemporary. The songwriting is in turns optimistic, angry and melancholic, and on occasions bruisingly honest. The music is fluid, live and raw, recorded in one room on eight channels of analog tape and the electric connection between Emma and the band comes through in every beat.

Emma grew up singing church songs with her maternal grandparents on the North coast of New South Wales. Her first secular gigs were singing in The Donovans, a band comprised of her mother and five uncles. With her mother, Emma sang country for years, and in her youth was a fixture at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, but she always yearned for the bluesier tones of her Father’s record collection, full of American artists like Laverne Baker and Etta James and Indigenous Australian artists like No Fixed Address and Archie Roach.

Years later, after touring and recording with many of the mainstays of Indigenous music and developing as a solo artist in her own right, Emma met members of The PutBacks, and finally she found a band with the gritty blues soaked tones she had been looking for. She also found, in PutBacks bassist Mick Meagher, a co-writer and collaborator on the the soul songs she had been waiting a lifetime to write and sing. The results are well worth the wait and hopefully, only mark the beginning of this oh-so-right collaboration.

Buy Vinyl/CD/Digital

Emma Donovan & The PutBacks - Voodoo

iTunes: http://apple.co/1EY9Nse
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1FjnjH6
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/1RHZj8u

Buy on Bandcamp

Mighty Sceptres: I Found The Letter

www.facebook.com/BlackPeachesBand
www.twitter.com/_black_peaches_
 
(c) 1965 Records

Rob Smoughton is probably best known as a long-time member of Hot Chip and Scritti Politti, while his alter-ego Grovesnor has released a number of albums to critical acclaim.

Now he unveils his new band, Black Peaches.

A midway point between the swamp and the tropics, Black Peaches’ music is gloriously loose-limbed and strung-out: a psychotropic stew of country boogie, spiritual jazz and funk.

With slide guitars, Latin percussion and shimmering keyboards, the Peaches sound is a cinematic experience, the soundtrack to a bar fight at the country disco or an incantation of the black arts. At other times they swagger with the easy confidence of Little Feat, Manassas, or Dr John to create a pulsating, unwinding groove for a hot summer's day where no one is in too much of a hurry.

Black Peaches is not just a sextet, but in the mind of its skipper, Smoughton, a destination where various strands of musical flavour and colour coalesce to form a heavenly brew, equal parts melody and groove, grit and bliss, sublimely tight and gloriously loose-limbed.

Black Peaches demanded a band format so, Smoughton sent his initial demos to musicians he fancied roping in, like Nick Roberts, Grosvenor’s live drummer, and Charlie Michael (The Severed Limb, Shock Defeat), a master of Brazilian percussion. Smoughton had played with bassist Susumu Mukai in (Hot Chip frontman) Alexis Taylor’s live band. Duelling guitarist Adam Chetwood, is a fellow country and jazz fan and plays pedal steel too. Thomas Greene (Cold Specks) on keyboards completes a consummate line-up that added ideas to Smoughton’s demos, which he took away and wrote more parts for.

Inspirations include ‘70s Nashville combo Barefoot Jerry and their guitarist Mac Gaden - that combination of southern soul and country coming together, with Caribbean or South American music seeped in.

Steven Stills’ first post-Crosby Stills Nash & Young ensemble Manassas were a blueprint in terms of Black Peaches’ line-up, with percussion and pedal steel.

Then from Brazil, the rhythm section of Baden Powell Sambas’ 1966 album Os Afro Sambas and the double guitar attack of the psych-tinged Novos Baianos, alongside Chicago’s funky post-rockers 5Style and Krautrock legends Can.

After all, peaches don’t only grow in Georgia…

Fire & A Water Sign

'Music for Jazz Dancers' is a selection of hot & exclusive tunes taken directly from DJ Adrian Gibsons' sets at 'Messin' Around', the club he has been running for 14 years with DJ Perry Louis (who is also the leader of the Jazz CoTech Dancers)

The UK Jazz-Dance Scene is a uniquely positioned scene that has sent shock waves around the world and influenced countless artists, DJ's and Dancers. Despite this, it is surprisingly sparsely documented with regards to CD's, Books and articles detailing the songs, dance moves, key DJ's, dancers and clubs. Luckily, we recently had the fantastic 'From Jazz Funk & Fusion to Acid Jazz' by Freestyle recording artist/DJ and now author Mark 'Snowboy' Cotgrove'

Peter Herbolzheimer's Rhythm Combination & Brass featuring Dianne Reeves kick off the CD with a storming rendition of the Ray Noble jazz standard 'Cherokee' which was initially made famous by Charlie Parker. Other highlights include Primo & the Groupe's 'A Child Runs Free', a wonderful modern take on Fred Johnson's notoriously rare Vocal Jazz track, and Marcos Ariel's 'Samba Torto' which is Brazilian Samba-Fusion of the highest order.

Music For Jazz Dancers draws together be-bop, nu-jazz, big band and samba/jazz fusion sounds, the common denominator being that they all inspire hot heeled hoofers to throw jazz shapes across discerning dancefloors the world over! If you like what you have heard you can visit some of the Jazz-Dance clubs like 'Shiftless Shuffle' or 'Out To Lunch' to experience the music and atmosphere for yourself. 

05  THE COLMAN BROTHERS - SEM AMOR (BIG BAND ORIGINAL)

To bookend the Collocutor -'Instead' project Contours offered up this On the Corner Banger. The next chapter for Collocutor begins here and one for the next Vs 12". 

Contours Vs Collocutor - Agama

HERE TO THERE TO EVERYWHERE

BISON - Soup Fiction (Instrumental)

Midnight Movement / The Rain Song

The Olympians - Midnight Movement

"Total Explosion" re-issued on vinyl.  In stores March 05 on Hi Records/Fat Possum Records.

The Olympians - Midnight Movement

Daptone Records