Happy Birthday to Tru-Thoughts, 10 years young, a major achievement for any independent record label especially in these turbulent time of falling record sales, thoughtless free loaders/uploaders and distributors going bust (which happened to the label last year).
To celebrate this milestone the label is releasing a 2 CD best of with CD1 focussing on the mellower side and CD2 on the arse shakers. The first CD kicks off with the gentle strains of a pre-Ninja Tune Bonobo closely followed by Nostalgia 77 who utilises the sweet vocals of Beth Rowley on a mellow jazz number that segues nicely into one of the UK’s finest soul voices, Alice Russell and the old time soul of ‘Hurry On’.
Natural Self lays down some soulful drum and bass with ‘The Rising’ before Milez Benjiman gets all big electro bass and fresh beats on us with the nu-soul of ‘Chop That Wood’. The dream team of Quantic and Nickodemus throw some Latin spirit into the mix with the catchy Latin beats of ‘Mi Swing Es Tropical’, which some of you might remember from an Ipod advert a few years ago!
The killer tracks just don’t stop and this is only disc one! Lizzy Parks injects more soul with the jazz flavoured ‘Raise The Roof’, The Hot 8 Brass Band show brass bands aren’t all situated in remote northern colliery towns as they get all funk and jazz on ‘Whats my name’, Flevans adds the disco flavour, Quantic injects some Latin reggae before Kinny adds her vocal prowess to an Afro flavoured slice of quality soul and Freddie Cruger goes all nu-soul to wrap up the first disc.
Disc Two kicks off with some new style samba rock and Quantic’s orchestra get all funky with the swinging ‘Super 8′. The Bamboos add their trademark raw funk and TM Juke goes all nu-jazz with ‘Come Away’ featuring the vocals of Sophie Faricy. Lanu reminds us of the glory days of broken beat with a great jazzy soulful dancefloor winner and that’s before we even get to Belleruche and more Alice Russell and you can’t forget about the soul genius of Kylie Audist and she reminds us why with the modern northern soul classic ‘Community Service Announcement’.
For those of you quick enough there is also a limited 3CD box set with the third disc consisting entirely of un-released material from the label roster but don’t sleep to get your hands on one of those.
Tru-Thoughts Website
