Andrew Ashong - Special

Everything in its Right Place

Qwalia is the experimental, improvisational home for a quartet of some of London’s most prolific and inspiring musicians. 

Led by drummer Yusuf Ahmed (Joy Crookes, Anoushka Shankar, Unknown to Known), much of the band’s music to date surfaced in a single two-day session at the Fish Factory in Willesden, West London. 

Although improvisational at its core, the band’s fluency and innate musicality makes it hard at times to believe these pieces weren’t written and developed over weeks, rather than conjured in the moment, with no prior rehearsal. Qwalia’s music is an instinctive aural expression of how things seemed in the moment of creation.

Featuring Ben Reed on bass (Frank Ocean, David Byrne, Richard Russell’s Everything Is Recorded), Tal Janes on Guitar (Jordan Rakei, Cherise, Waaju) and Joseph Costi on keys and synths (Cat Stevens, Tom Herbert, Heidi Vogel), the band’s debut album ‘Sound And Reason’ was released by Alberts Favourites in March 2023.

This beautiful version of Elevator Company was recorded in Yusuf's living room last spring for a live video promoting the 2nd album Abbreviations. The band rarely, if ever, replay music they've already recorded, so this is a unique moment and one we're incredibly happy to be able to share. 

Elevator Company (Live)

Qwalia - Elevator Company (Live)

I hate missing you (so much)

Spiraling Out by smokethatdank

Velvet Nights slides like silk in low light breathy horns, velvet-thick bass, mellow strings, and hip-hop pulse under a soul vocal. Candlelight flickers, temptation hums, and the groove keeps you just this side of confession.

Velvet Nights

Electric Wire Hustle - Again (Scratch 22 Remix)

Binker and Moses leave the now behind and Journey to the Mountain of Forever.

Binker Golding and Moses Boyd will release Journey to the Mountain of Forever -  their second album for London record company Gearbox Records - on 2nd June 2017 in double vinyl LP and double CD formats.

When Binker and Moses’ debut album Dem Ones was released in the Summer of 2015 it kickstarted a remarkable year for the young saxophone and drums duo, who won a string of awards including the 2015 MOBO Awards: Best Jazz Act, Jazz FM Awards 2016: UK Jazz Act of the Year and Breakthrough Act of the Year and the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards: Jazz Newcomer of the Year. Like the album itself, their festival and club performances received rave reviews and ever-growing audiences, culminating in a November 2016 UK tour with The Bad Plus. 

Journey to the Mountain of Forever is a story album about travelling from the known to the unknown. You can expect to meet with Shamans and Ultra Blacks and immerse yourself in strange rituals and echoes from the infinite.

Sessions for the new album took place on July 21st and 22nd 2016, resulting in 10 reels of tape filled with over five hours of music. Like it’s predecessor Dem Ones, the new album was recorded completely live from Mark Ronson’s Zelig studio by Grammy award winning engineer Ricky Damian. direct to a 1960’s Studer C37 1/4” tape machine at Gearbox’s studio next door with no edits or mixing. The vinyl lacquers were cut directly from this original stereo master on Gearbox’s 1967 Haeco Scully lathe with Westrex RA1700 series amps, using a Westrex 3DIIA cutting head and Telefunken U73B tube limiter, Maselec master control and equalisation and Audio Note monitoring equipment.

- - - - - - -
Journey to the Mountain of Forever

Disc One: The Realm of Now 
Binker Golding - tenor and soprano saxophone
Moses Boyd - Drums

Disc Two: The Realms of the Infinite
Binker and Moses with: 
Evan Parker - tenor and soprano saxophone
Byron Wallen - trumpet
Tori Handsley - harp
Sarathy Korwar - tabla
Youssef Dates - drums

Produced by Darrel Sheinman for Gearbox Records
Recorded by Ricky Damian and Caspar Sutton-Jones
Mastered by Darrel Sheinman and Caspar Sutton-Jones at Gearbox Records

Binker and Moses
Journey To the Mountain of Forever
Cat No: GB1537
Barcode: 5065001717482
Formats: Double Vinyl LP Gatefold, Double CD

Order Here: http://smarturl.it/BinkerandMosesJTTMOF

Journey To The Mountain Of Forever

Valley Of The Ultra Blacks

OFFICIAL URL - ​https://hopest.re/LookAround

DANIELLE PONDER &
KARATE BOOGALOO

“Look Around” ​out July 24, 2020 via ​Hopestreet Recordings​.

New York singer and activist ​Danielle Ponder pairs up with Melbourne cinematic soul outfit ​Karate Boogaloo to deliver ​“Look Around,” a haunting reflection on the times we live in. ​“Look Around” was written in the studio with the band in the first days of 2020 when Danielle was in Melbourne, and at the time was conceived as a cry for help in the literal firestorm that was engulfing Australia. As 2020 progressed, the words that came in that moment of inspiration seemed to reflect each of the multiplying calamities this year has presented. When the death of George Floyd ignited indignation across the USA and the world, the lyrics to Look Around could not have been more apropos.

In Danielle’s words: “fires were raging through Australia and smoke covered the sky. It felt like all of our human sins had gotten the best of us and we were paying a price. I didn’t know that when I arrived back home in the U.S, the world would only get darker. I feel like my past self wrote this song for my future self knowing what was to come.” ​This song would help Danielle through what has been one of the most painful times to be Black in America.

Coming from different continents and different backgrounds was no obstacle to Danielle Ponder and Karate Boogaloo forming an immediate musical connection in the studio. Karate Boogaloo is a formidable studio band with years of studious focus learning soul music and its history. The instant connection is obvious on ​“Look Around”, ​as the band and Danielle sound like they’d been playing together for years rather than hours. Black Lives Matter, while being a US based movement, has a strong resonance in Australia where Indigenous people are massively over-represented in prison populations and in fatal interactions with the police. Thus, sales in July and August are going to be donated to the Equal Justice Initiative in the USA and Warriors Of The Aboriginal Resistance in Australia.

Danielle Ponder & Karate Boogaloo - Look Around

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 - All News Is Good News

"PLEASURE, JOY and HAPPINESS," AVAILABLE FROM DAY END RECORDS (DE-002).

STREAM: https://ffm.to/rlembdx
VINYL: https://dayendrecords.bandcamp.com/

eddiechacon.com

https://www.instagram.com/eddie_chacon_

https://www.instagram.com/johncarrollkirby

https://www.instagram.com/dayendrecords

Eddie Chacon experienced proper, peak-nineties acclaim in the soul duo Charles and Eddie: they scored a global No. 1 in 1992 with “Would I Lie To You,” appeared three times on Top of the Pops, and featured on soundtracks from True Romance to Super Mario Bros.. Their crooning style was clearly pop-ready, but undeniably reverent: the pair first met when Eddie noticed Charles carrying a vinyl copy of Marvin Gaye’s "Trouble Man” on a New York subway train.

By that time, Chacon had already been navigating music in interesting ways, all the way back to his teen garage rock band with the late Cliff Burton (Metallica) and Mike Bordin (Faith No More). In the late ’80s, he released a full-length on Uncle Luke from 2 Live Crew’s label and signed to Columbia as a solo act. He was a working artist, always popping up in unexpected places: through the course of his career, Chacon would write, sing, or produce ten Top 40 hits around the globe.

In the words of Mac DeMarco: “Eddie Chacon is planet earth’s number one musician. Yesterday, today, and forever.”

Years ago, Chacon retired from music for a second calling as a fashion photographer and creative director. In an interview at the time, he said, “I was fortunate to have a 35-year music career and felt that there wasn’t that much more for me to say or achieve.” Very thankfully, that’s no longer the case. Private experiments, far from the major-label center he once frequented, began to feel urgent and new. “There’s nothing more exciting for me than getting to start from the beginning again,” he says today.

“Pleasure, Joy and Happiness” will be available July of 2020 on the boutique Los Angeles-based label Day End Records. This is a thoughtfully considered album of quiet, confident R&B: it doesn’t jump out at you, but rather gets in you. Produced by John Carroll Kirby, the like-minded artist and collaborator with Frank Ocean and Solange Knowles, it features restrained percussion from Kanye West’s Sunday Service drummer Lamar Carter. Celestial soul as a break from chaos, these are quietly challenging songs as timeless as they are contemporary.

“What a rare and cool challenge it was for me to help Eddie re-emerge after a long hiatus,” says John Carroll Kirby. “I was excited to produce a record for him that captured the chill, laid-back wisdom and easy vocal mastery he has that you don’t see that much these days.”

Lead single “My Mind Is Out of Its Mind” finds a deep groove to try and contain spiraling heartbreak, while the sweet and wobbly “Trouble” balances the delightful near whisper of the title track “Pleasure, Joy and Happiness.” But even the project’s lightest moments feel sincere and mature. Altogether: a truly unifying release, coming from a man who’s earned the right to share such a regal, romantic sound.

“I used to think to myself,” Chacon says, “if I ever make a record again, I’d want it to be a record you’d have to be my age to make.”

Eddie Chacon - 01 - "Trouble"

Day End Records

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