Describing itself as ‘a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers’, Seattle-based label Sublime Frequencies has spent the last three years carving itself a niche as one of the world’s finest purveyors of hard-to-find music.
Continue reading V/A – Radio Thailand: Transmissions from the Tropical Kingdom
Ivete Sangalo is the reigning queen of axê music and a superstar back in her native Brazil. She’s the complete package: a fantastic voice, an impressive dancer and, just as importantly, she looks great
The Jazzinvaders project is a collaboration between producer/percussionist Phil Martin and members of famous Dutch jazz outfit The Houdini’s. Rejecting the producer-centric abstractions of the nu-jazz/broken beat set, Up & Out is a groove-centred attempt at updating the classic latin and jazz-funk sounds of the 1960s and 1970s for the 21st century.
Nobody can accuse Ed Motta of lacking ambition. Since achieving pop stardom in his native Brazil at age 16, he has forged a unique recording career that has seen him move effortlessly from pure pop to funk to instrumental jazz — and back again. Now, 19 years later, Aystelum sees this prodigiously talented musician releasing his finest work yet.
With the release of their first two albums, Da Lama Ao Caos and Afrociberdélia, Nação Zumbi and lead singer Chico Science revolutionized the Brazilian music scene of the 1990s. Have they still got it?
Gal Costa was a key figure in the Tropicália movement of the late 1960s. Her collaborations with the key songwriters of the era produced a string of essential recordings and Gal became an icon of Brazilian countercultural femininity
It’s twenty years since Public Enemy first scorched their way into the public’s consciousness with their mould-breaking combination of radical politics and incendiary polemic, however the years since the glory days of the late-1980s and early-1990s have seen the struggle to stay relevant in an increasingly fickle hip hop scene.
Inspired post-manguebeat fusions from the Northeast of Brazil
Second volume in the Congotronics series, where traditional, rural Congo collides head-on with the urban rush of modern Kinshasa
For a few short years from 1966-70, Latin Soul was the hip, young sound of Spanish Harlem. A riotous collision of Latin rhythms, late-1960s psychedelia and Afro-American R&B, the music was fresh, young and funky
Continue reading V/A – Explosivos: Deep-Soul From The Latin Heart
One of Brazil’s greatest voices tackles the back catalogue of one of its greatest songwriters
Ever since the term ‘rare groove’ was coined back in the 1980s, the never-ending quest for the perfect break has produced scores of compilations bursting with forgotten, little-known or downright obscure grooves from all corners of the world.
Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980) was a celebrated African American painter and evangelist who spent most of her life living and working in New Orleans. In 1969 she laid down what would be her only album, a potent mix of a capella and tambourine hymns that would become one of gospel music’s neglected treasures. A couple of years ago, the Rope-A-Dope imprint acquired the master rights to these recordings and enlisted renowned producer King Britt to reinterpret Sister G’s music
Continue reading King Britt – Presents Sister Gertrude Morgan
