Format: Vinyl LP, CD, Digital
Web: www.hopestreetrecordings.com/woodenboy

It’s soul music, baby, but not as we know it. The backbeat and the handclaps are still there and the horns still sound. The bass bumps, the organ screams and the guitars still twang, but the singer has left the room. Everything is shades of blue. This is soul music for the after hours. For the solitary dancers and the lonely hearts. The soundtrack to solitary headlights on a midnight highway. What to call it? Who cares! Can you dance to it? Just try not to. No one’s telling you to throw your hands up in the air, but no one would be surprised if you did. It’s dark here, so you can do your own thing.

Wooden Boy was recorded by The Cactus Channel -- a ten piece band from Melbourne, Australia -- all born in the 90s and raised on the internet. Yet somehow, this astonishing follow up to last year's rave-reviewed debut, Haptics, sounds like it could have been recorded in the 1970s, or possibly in the distant future. A timeless, placeless cinematic odyssey, Wooden Boy could have been an alternate soundtrack to Ghost Dog -- if Lalo Schifrin and the Meters were collaborating on the RZA's score. Or maybe Wooden Boy was what happened when Lars Von Trier got invited to direct an episode of Soul Train. What any of it may actually mean is left to the listener's imagination.

Funk aficionados will hear shades of New York on this record, echoes of El Michel’s taking on Wu Tang, the influence of Budos and Menehan et al. But this is the Generation Z version; both more tempestuous and more introverted. Recorded analog in the digital era, presented faceless in the celebrity era, inexplicably ambiguous in the soundbite era, is this the album the world needs right now? Undoubtedly yes. In a world where the NSA can read the text message that dumped you, what does a person need more than sad soul music from the future? Wooden Boy, baby, Wooden Boy.

PRAISE FOR HAPTICS by THE CACTUS CHANNEL (debut 2012 album):

•	"Hot-to-trot... an embryonic version of the Meters or the Dap Kings" - THE AUSTRALIAN (four stars)
•	"Tightly raw soul, rambling deep-funk jams and organ-driven party mash-ups" - THE AGE
•	"Infectiously funky sounds... a horn-fuelled, butt-shaking affair" - TRIPLE J HOME & HOSED
•	"Old-fashioned, gritty soul music – by a bunch of white teenagers from Melbourne" - THE MONTHLY
•	"Album Of The Week" - RTR PERTH, PBS-FM, SYN-FM, 2SER + EASTSIDE RADIO, RTR PERTH

FREE Single Download

The Cactus Channel - Black Flag and Lady Bountiful

One of the best version of DeVaungh's song

Yo La Tengo - Be Thankful for What You Got

I have loved sza since 2014 when I first heard her EP, "Z". I started writing songs when I was in high school and would post them on this account just for the fun of it. I was more bothered with crushes and making the varsity basketball team than a career in music. Throughout high school, I struggled with the feeling of being the underdog/outcast. College was good, but I realized a lot of the ideas I had about certain things were from other people--even the ideas I had about myself. It has taken years to deconstruct and build my courage to allow myself to be. I didn't need to prove myself or overcompensate. I've learned a lot through my journey with doing music. When being an athlete was over and relationships ended, music was there. When I realized I didn't enjoy anything as much as music, forcing myself to believe teaching was my only way felt cruel. I say this all to say that, sza is a huge inspiration--not only musically, but in her personal growth. I respect her authenticity, vulnerability, and how she chooses to love and show up in this world even when it is not easy.

warm up

A Number - (Khruangbin - The Number 4 BeatMiks)

Electric Wire Hustle - Again (Scratch 22 Remix)

Fold – Something Gives
Released September 12, 2016
CD & digital download

If you like this track and you're on Spotify please give us a follow:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3lOmv1v5gfdtBwvRufzjtr

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Having included this track among his favourites of 2016 on the last day of the year Huey Morgan also provided the UK national radio debut on BBC 6 Music followed by a hat trick of spins from Gideon Coe. Kara Manning broadcasted the US radio premiere courtesy of WFUV, New York.

Something Gives is a timely vehicle for the keen eloquence of James Baldwin whose voice, along with that of the wonderful Alice Walker, is the basis of the track.

We've been feeling urgently compelled to respond somehow to the heavy sociopolitical escalations of late on both sides of the pond. This release is our way of bridging the distances & expressing universal solidarity as human beings. Musically the tune bears similarities to A Tribe Called Quest's jazzy hip hop vibes and Arthur Verocai's Brazilian way of joy and despair all at once.

All music written, arranged, performed, engineered, produced & mixed by Seth Mowshowitz apart from tenor saxophone arranged and performed by Emma Johnson.
http://www.johnsonmusic.co.uk/

Mastered by Erik Aldrey
http://www.erikaldrey.com/

LYRICS
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[James Baldwin]

[REFRAIN]
I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country.

These people have deluded themselves for so long they really don't think I'm human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say, and this means that they have become in themselves moral monsters.

It doesn't matter any longer what you do to me: you can put me in jail, you can kill me. By the time I was 17 you'd done everything that you could do to me. The problem now is: how you gonna save yourselves?

How you gonna save yourselves?

[REFRAIN]
I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country.

There are days, one of them, when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is in it. How precisely are you going to reconcile yourself to your situation here, and how you're going to communicate that you are here?

The country has arrived at a place where it can no longer contain revolt. Human beings are not by nature non-violent, you know? You can only survive so many beatings, so much humiliation, so much despair, so many broken promises before something gives.

Before something gives.

[REFRAIN]
I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart…

[Alice Walker]
We are being killed by people who don't feel – if we get down to that, that is the problem.

[James Baldwin]
I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart…

[Alice Walker]
If you don't feel it you kill it because you think it doesn't feel either…

[REFRAIN]
I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country.

[Alice Walker]
So away with that, we don't want that.

[James Baldwin]
I'm aware that something terrible has happened, which is very hard to describe.

Something Gives

Buy on iTunes

Funk was the syncopated groove that emerged in the mid-sixties through hits from James Brown and Dyke and The Blazers. It was a natural development out of rhythm and blues. Thousands of local bands tried to emulate Brown’s success, and in the process created a plethora of rare and sought after 45s and album cuts that have been mined by DJs and producers to fill floors or provide breakbeats. Whilst the 20 tracks on this compilation would cost you thousands of pounds to own on their original issue, that isn’t really the point. Instead you get to listen to magnificent grooves such as Mickey & The Soul Generations explosive ‘Iron Leg’, Andrew Brown’s blues tinged ‘You Made Me Suffer’ or the message music of 24 Carat Black.

On the 14th October 2016 J&D Records release three exceptional compilations that look at vintage African-American music through the prism of UK club culture. All Night Long, Can You Feel ThatBeat and Extra Added Soul will be available on CD & double vinyl and are compiled by DJ and award winning compiler Dean Rudland, with stunning artwork from his long-time collaborators The Unknown. Across the three volumes there are 60 tracks of soul, funk and boogie.

Can You Feel That Beat: Funky 45s and Other Rare Grooves

The First Thing I Do In The Morning - Joyce Williams

Khruangbin - The Number 3 - Dupont Underground Sessions

Fave tune is Me and You. I love it! - Gilles Peterson (6 Music)

PERPETUAL EP 1. Me and You
Co-Produced by STAC & Memotone	2. Perpetual
Released on 28th April 2017 3. Hippo Love	
2 Points Records 4. Harp
5. Hippo Love – Blue Daisy Rmx

The EP is B E A U T I F U L - MYYYYYY GOODNESSSSSS - Julie Adenuga (Beats 1)

Having released her debut album on WahWah45s in 2010, 2017 sees STAC write, record, co-produce and self release her follow up EP. Perpetual delivers timeless, compelling songwriting and combines achingly beautiful melodies with Badu-esq cool. Compared by Mark Ronson to a young Minnie Ripperton, in a world saturated by the ‘Indie Girl’ vocal, her voice cuts effortlessly through.

This is beautiful. All tracks are so good. - Nick Luscombe (Radio 3)

Produced with the help of Memotone (William Yates), Perpetual is an idiosyncratic mix of live and electronic sounds, which is immediately evident in the glorious opener Me and You, a song that begins simply with pianette and vocals and crescendos into a concoction of brass, strings, vocal harmonies, drum pads, electronic samples and a helicopter. 
The rather perky Perpetual is an uplifting instant classic that you are sure you heard that time you travelled back to 1956 on your gap year - but definitely didn’t. 
The laid back Hippo Love is a dreamy jazz tinged invitation for a lover to make up their bloody mind. 
And lastly, Harp has reduced many a stone-hearted goblin-troll to tears. 
Throw Blue Daisy’s Hawaiian Bass* remix of Hippo Love into the mix and you have a startlingly original EP.

Released by:
2 Points Records
Release date:
28 April 2017

Electric Wire Hustle - Again (Scratch 22 Remix)

Scratch22