The Wave

BBE Music is thrilled to announce the release of Modern Love, a diverse compendium of specially commissioned cover versions of rarities and classics in tribute to David Bowie.

Featuring an array of artists such as Jeff Parker, We Are KING, Meshell Ndegeocello, Helado Negro, Khruangbin, Matthew Tavares, Nia and more, Modern Love seeks to champion Bowie’s lesser-known connection to soul, R&B, jazz, funk, and gospel. The prominent jazz influences throughout Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, were a key inspiration for curating this collection of reimagined Bowie songs with these artists. The resulting album is an eclectic tribute featuring a group of artists who not only fit together creatively, but who, like Bowie, straddle different worlds musically, with soul and jazz at their core.

Modern Love offers a fresh look at Bowie’s trailblazing career, aiming to highlight the often overlooked relationship between his back catalogue and musical genres traditionally pioneered by artists of color. The project was curated by music executive and DJ Drew McFadden, alongside BBE Music founder Peter Adarkwah. “I felt that the connection between Bowie and R&B, jazz, funk, gospel and all things soulful, had never really been explored before — at least not so much in covers, which tend to lean more towards rock and pop,” says McFadden. “Certainly, there’s been plenty of Bowie covers over the years, but none that have really tapped into what seems to have been a big part of his core musical
style and direction.”

Modern Love is an interactive sonic map. Here, seventeen artists make their way into the varied regions of his sundry catalog and circle back with seventeen unique re-imaginings of both his cornerstone and lesser-known tracks. Some, in atmosphere, feel like a sly alternate take from original sessions (Khruangbin’s ethereal, funk infused version of “Right” from Young Americans); others nod at the source, then wink before diving into the deep waters of another musical stratosphere (Sessa’s sexy Tropicalia-drenched “Panic in Detroit” from Aladdin Sane). Still others take tunes down to the studs and then re-arrange the moody interiors: Meshell Ndegeocello’s pensive “Fantastic Voyage” from Lodger and Tavares’ clever take on “Heroes” which is restructured into a kinetic hardbop-esque backdrop, fronted by ice-cool, held-back vocals. The bullseye these artists aim for is Bowie’s fearlessness. “Fame was an incredible bluff that worked,” he once reflected. “Very flattering. I’ll do anything until I fail. And when I succeed I quit too.”

Modern Love packs us off on a journey that balances on risk’s sharp blade. Track-to-track, it explores what happens when a musician throws out notions of should and safe and stretches beyond the known. These artists use Bowie both as a guide and a prism: A way of being and seeing. Their offerings, widely divergent, explore the inheritance from an artist who freed himself from labels, genres and, consequently, pigeonholes. While he was at it, he decimated fixed notions about territory (or terra) itself; boundaries hemmed-in his creative process, but his essence remained free to roam. He may have vanished in earthly form, yet, as he also promised in the lyrics of “Modern Love,” But I never wave bye-bye . . .” This compilation assures us that his spirit swirls around us. His force is alive to all of us and, here, it is summoned with an incantation that celebrates possibility.

Khruangbin - Right

Autumn In New York

Stings

the name of the song i sampled is the title of the song

Gypsy Woman

I'm very thankful and fortunate for the opportunity to remix my friends incredible tune 'FloatLife'. I've been a fan of his ever since the first time I heard his music. big big shouts to the man, @ian-ewing7, for his extreme pooch skills and gullyness. much love brother

original: https://soundcloud.com/blvntrecords/ianewing-floatlife

Ian Ewing - FloatLife (kkami remix)

XANTalk || Sean Deaux || Prod By THEMpeople

02 - Askim

03 - Isabelle

04 - Final Thought

06 - The Rhythm Changes

08 - Leroy And Lanisha

FSX-024:  Charlotte Dos Santos - Cleo
coming out June 21st on Fresh Selects: http://freshselects.bandcamp.com/album/cleo

Watch the music video: https://youtu.be/vGwRO3evKr0

Written & performed by Charlotte Dos Santos
Produced by Fredfades
Mastered by Kelly Hibbert for Almachrome

Follow:
@charlottedossantos
@fredfades
@freshselects

Cleo

Charlotte Dos Santos "Watching You"

Far Out Recordings are honoured to be working with master composer, arranger and pianist, Antonio Adolfo for the first time since releasing his Destiny album in 2007. This time we present the first ever vinyl reissue of his era-defining Viralata LP: An essential album from Brazil's majorly progressive heyday of late seventies jazz-funk. Viralata is a sacred artefact of Brazilian music, which Antonio himself describes as ‘a product of my hybrid musical influences that joins together flavours of marchinhas de carnaval, frevo, toada, classical, baião, mpb and jazz, etc’.

The album’s first track ‘Cascavel’ is the emotionally charged, celebratory dance anthem, which became a London jazz-dance classic in the early ‘90s after Far Out label boss Joe Davis discovered a handful of copies in a second hand shop in Sao Paulo and brought them back to London to sell to DJs like Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge. In recent years the track has been played out by the likes of Floating Points, Mr Scruff and Andrew Ashong, it was also the last song ever to play on the hallowed soundsystem of London’s beloved club Plastic People…

“Saturday nights at Plastic People wouldn't have been the same without this album. Cascavel was such an important track for the club, it was the last tune we played there before the doors were closed forever.”
Sean McAuliffe, (Plastic People & NTS Radio)

Viralata sits comfortably on the same pedestal as Azymuth's Light As A Feather and Joao Donato’s Quem É Quem, which is no co-incidence. All three keystone LPs were recorded and engineered by Toniniho, considered by many to be "the Brazilian Rudy Van Gelder" whose magic touches in the studio also helped to produce Marcos Valle's Previsão Do Tempo and Joyce's Água E Luz among many other holy grails and unassailable classics of soulful Brazilian music.

Antonio’s work has been widely performed by his legendary Brazilian contemporaries including Sergio Mendes, Emilio Santiago and Erasmo Carlos, but also by platinum-selling American icons including Stevie Wonder, Herb Alpert and Dionne Warwick. Following an early 70s spell of studying jazz in the USA, Viralata’s release in 1979 arrived at the height of a flourishing period of Antonio’s career. With his late 60s and 70s output following through on his influences of tropicalia, funk, MPB and easy listening, the almost entirely instrumental Viralata marked an apex for Brazilian jazz.

Viralata

Vinyl

Antonio Adolfo - Cascavel

Miguel Atwood-Ferguson - Drips-Take Notice (Feat - Flying Lotus)

Galaxy

Management:  Amlak Music
banch@amlakmusic.com

Agent:  ICM Partners
MBlackman@icmpartners.com

03 - Isabelle

Kamasi Washington

Recent comments

MusicHist1

joerxworx

Joneel

Roman Valjean

Related tracks