First of all,Mr Bongo I truly appreciate your description. Secondly I appreciate your dedication and consistency to TIMELESS music. Thirdly,being recommended your platform has been wonderful🚀💯

into twenty2

Barcelone Jazztronica fest  live on vinyls

This release is a special one; a moment where the two halves of the Mr Bongo record label unite, our heritage re-issues and our contemporary artists roster. 

Minoru Muraoka’s 'The Positive and the Negative’ is a firm favourite at Mr Bongo. It sees a master of the shakuhachi, a traditional bamboo Japanese flute, flex his prodigious skill resulting in a unique mix of breakbeat jazz and Japanese folkloric music. 'The Positive and the Negative’ featured on the 1970 'Bamboo’ album, which Mr Bongo reissued in 2019. Heralded by DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, Egon, and many others. The record’s cult status had us thinking how could we pay further homage to a sublime track such as this. The opportunity came to us in an email from Melbourne’s Surprise Chef with a link to the fabulous reinterpretation of the track which they had just recorded. 

"Minoru Muraoka’s ‘Bamboo’ LP has long been a fixture in our record bags, mostly for the killer shakuhachi funk cut The Positive and The Negative. The record is possibly our favourite from Mr Bongo’s extensive catalogue of reissues, and certainly the most influential to Surprise Chef; The Positive and the Negative’s cinematic atmosphere paired with the wonky drum feels and dramatic performance makes it a near-perfect amalgamation of what we try to capture on Surprise Chef records. We’ve borrowed an element or two from the tune over the last few albums (such as the percussion on ‘The Limp’), so it felt right to go head first into reinterpreting the entire track for ourselves. We recorded the tune in Karate Boogaloo’s attic studio with our man Henry Jenkins at the controls and Hudson Whitlock on percussion. We spent an entire day trying to get the take; we felt such a deep responsibility to capture the intensity of the original, we must have done 20 or 30 takes before we were finally happy. We stuck a fork in it late into the night, satisfied that we’d had our best crack at paying homage to a masterpiece by the great Minoru Muraoka.” - Surprise Chef

Forged in their signature sound, "The Chef" have made 'The Positive and the Negative' their own whilst simultaneously treating the original with utmost respect. The shakuhachi and koto have been replaced by synths and guitars, but the breakbeat psychedelic vein flows richly through both instruments  

The 7" vinyl format was the right fit for this release, so the original Minoru Muraoka recording which clocks in over nine minutes has been edited into a 7” version to accompany Surprise Chef’s new take.

A. Surprise Chef - The Positive And The Negative

Grant Green - Sookie Sookie live

Maze Of Sounds

Maze Of Sounds (feat. The Soul Surfers)

Dorothy Ashby - Essence Of Sapphire

21st Century Molam

Lam San Disco

A deep, atmospheric mix that blends Afro-jazz, electronica, and organic rhythm. It moves between moments of introspection and energy, like a lost transmission, unfolding in waves, blending past and present.

Arrangement - Coconut Mango
The Brother Moves On - Itumeleng Revisited
Gerald Toto - Ma Mama
Sibusile Xaba - Umdali
Sophia Kennedy - Kimono Hill
Håkan Hellström - That's All Right (Håkan Hellström edit) by Laura Rivers
DJ Koze - Wie schön du bist
Gerry Read - Satyricon
Schlammpeitziger - Loch ohne Licht - Ada Remix
Dave DK - Don't Eat the Homies
El_Txef_A - Mugarrirantz feat. Napoka Iria - Dave DK Remix
Masayoshi Fujita - Story of Forest
La Finca - What Clouds Say
DJ Koze, Ada - Take a run

Disclaimer: This mix is a non-commercial, creative project for promotional purposes only. All tracks and their respective rights belong to the original artists and labels. No copyright infringement is intended. If you own the rights to any of the music featured and would like it removed, please contact me directly.

Webby’s coconut mango transmission

Alice Dona - C'est Pas Prudent (Senior Citizens Edit)

Remedies

Forty Winks

Produced by Ibaaku
Mixed by Karismatik Diksa

Francis Bebey - Sanza Nocturne (IBAAKU remix)

Music From Memory © 2018

Vinyl: http://www.musicfrommemory.com
Digital: http://music-from-memory.bandcamp.com/

Pete Brandt’s Method – What You Are (3:35)

Monetrik - Blues Soup ! (Out Now On Freshly Squeezed)

Red Astaire feat Erykah Badu - Rollin' stone.mp3

Jamming to Black Iris · Sven Wunder

There is something simultaneously both brand-new and retro about 'All News Is Good News’ - the debut album from Melbourne's instrumental soul group Surprise Chef. It sounds like something dreamt up by lo-fi cousins of David Axelrod and Janko Nilovic, with dramatic Library-music-esque cinematic arrangements echoing both light and dark, delving into moments of dissonance and positivity. There is a meticulous education of 1970’s soul on display that touches on the legacies of the great composer / producers, yet at the same time, this is a truly contemporary record that could have only been made now. 

The first limited pressing of 'All News Is Good News’ was released on the band's own 'College Of Knowledge' imprint in November 2019. It slipped rapidly into the collective consciousness of underground music lovers around the world, with all copies selling out within a week and becoming a firm favourite at Mr Bongo HQ in the process. We felt Surprise Chef had made something very special, a future-classic, and that needed to be heard well beyond those lucky enough to have bagged those limited first copies.

Formed at the end of 2017, Surprise Chef have grown within the fertile, creative, and supportive Melbourne music scene. Whilst the band is comprised of four core members, the album features friends and family as guest instrumentalists on flute, saxophone, vibraphone, congas, and assorted percussion; all adeptly recorded by engineer Henry Jenkins from the band Karate Boogaloo. The warm-raw-authenticity of the album was captured in the recordings live to tape over a handful of sessions in the band’s home studio in Melbourne’s inner-northern suburb of Coburg. As band member Lachlan Stuckey explains “All of the music we record is tracked live to tape, simply because so many of the records we love most were made that way".

The results are a captivating journey of instrumental cinematic-soul that will connect with the hardened Axelrod, Truth & Soul, El Michels Affair, and Daptone's fans, as well as the open-minded first-time listener. We are very excited to share this first slice of Surprise Chef’s world, with plenty more magic from these guys coming around the corner very soon.

All News Is Good News

Surprise Chef - Herbie Hemphill

Record label. Record shop. Film label. Since 1989.

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A. Surprise Chef - The Positive And The Negative

Mr Bongo

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