Funk | Soul 429 Items

Following up on the massive worldwide success of their debut album 55, Bacao Rhythm & Steel band is back with another heavy duty offering. Picking
up where they left off and incorporating a ton of new recording techniques they take a huge step forward with The Serpent’s Mouth. Named after the
eight-mile strait between the island of Trinidad and the coast of Venezuela, The Serpent’s Mouth is a journey through both originals and covers,
combining classic elements that wide-eared music fans already know, and mashing them up in new and unique ways.
Take “1 Thing” – on it, the group attacks the galloping, chopped Amerie smash hit, with singing pans that follow the R & B vocal. The sound is crisp
and up-front, arguably more muscular than the 2005 original. On “Great To Be Here,” they take on the Jackson 5 B-Boy favorite (which stretches back
to the Zulu Nation / Bronx block party days) – uncoincidentally, the original version featured a guitar lick that emulated a steel pan run. Here, it gets
an even more pulsating groove, adding open-drums breaks throughout, to get DJs salivating. The group veers through more inventively-constructed
covers as the album’s sequence continues, including Gang Starr’s “All For The Cash”, Mary J. Blige’s “I Love You”, and the recently unleashed first
single, “XXplosive” and “Burn,” paying tribute to both Dr. Dre and Mobb Deep for a bi-coastal funk party. And, as band leader Bjorn Wagner states,
“My favorite cover on the album is probably ‘Crockett Theme,’ which is the theme to ‘Miami Vice.’ I always loved the melody, and the cosmic vibe of
the song, and I was honestly surprised that it worked without synthesizers.”
This time around the group’s originals are even stronger, as evidenced by cuts like the flute-fueled break-fest of “Hoola Hoop”, the slow and spacey
“Touchdown”, and the album’s title track, the future-epic-adventure-movie-soundtrack cut “The Serpent’s Mouth.” Wagner explains, “I wrote the song
with Bernhard Hummer as an instrumental fantasy story – think of pirates, smugglers and a dangerously beautiful sea passage towards the island. It
became an allegory for our mind travels into the world of the steel pan.”
The Serpent’s Mouth is sure to please past fans and newly-minted ones alike. It seems like a new era for Steel Drum music is upon us, and Bacao is
firmly leading the way into the hearts of music fans around the world.

The incredible psych funk from June's PP-005, with two additional, EP-exclusive tracks. The companion to the limited 7" (PP-005), our new 180g 12" EP plays at 45RPM, has the same awesome unreleased tracks as PP-005, but also includes a couple extra unreleased tracks that you won't find on 7". This 12" 180g EP ships in July, following the 7" (PP005) which ships in June. The 7" (PP005) will contain 2 of the 4 tracks found on this EP, with the remaining 2 tracks exclusive to this EP (PP12005).

Artist and musician Alex Puddu, whom many already know for his “Danish Pornography” series and solo records, has written and produced the second album for his soulful band The Moonfires. A second coming that showcases strong R&B classic melodies and tight grooves that bring the listener up to a level of great funk bands like New Birth, Ohio Players, Mandrill, and Black Heat. The amazing album cover, showing King Kong spreading panic in the city, has been made by Italian comic-book and science fiction artist Giuseppe Festino, the same that, back in 70’s, illustrated the paperback covers of the popular sci-fi Urania series.
The opening Stones-inspired title-track “Gotta Keep it Rollin” kicks off the groove, building up with steady organ and a killer blues guitar riff, accompanying a street-story-telling by lead singer Duane Hobson. The second track is “Kill Me with the Rain”, a funky tune with powerful afro winds section, rock-funk guitar, and a great vocal leading all the way through the strong melody. “Woman” is a truly sexy-funk tune with Afro-vibes all throughout and catchy lyrics. The album’s first single, and probably the strongest tune on the album, is “Thunder Road”, a feel-good, up-tempo R&B song with catchy hook line and a sleazy organ playing along the tight rhythm section. The A-side closes with “Weekend Pleasure”, a powerful instrumental piece that lives up to the groove, and builds up to a cool break with a great bass solo.
The B-side starts strong with a cover of The Four Tops from the score “Are You Man Enough” – a great version of one the band’s top tunes! The following song is another album favorite, “Soul on Fire”: a well-produced tune played tight, and a perfect score for a street gang, warriors-type movie, as if it was written in 1979. The album continues on with two up-tempo tracks, “Funky City” and “Voodoo People” – definitely something for the dance floor! Crazy organ, funky riffs, massive percussion and congas taking the album to another level. The last song is a perfect ending, another great composition by Puddu: “King of The Night” – a strong West Coast ballad with prominent piano, played smooth all through, accentuated with a great vocal performance and a classic saxophone solo on the end.
“Gotta Keep It Rollin” is Alex Puddu at his groovest!!!

180g Colored Vinyl with heavy-duty card sleeve!

One of the finest voices in Southern Soul, George Jackson’s success as a writer meant he wasn’t pushed as an artist and so his vinyl output is disappointingly small. Kent Records is rectifying that with this 12-track LP.

Alex Puddu pulls an ace from up his sleeve with the new album The Gambler On his 10th solo album Alex Puddu is back and surprises with a strong set of songs, inspired by a mixture of the early 60’s sound of doo-wop vocal harmonies, together with R’n’B and a hint of jazz og surf references. It’s clear that one can unmistakably hear Puddu has a true love for the music of this period; unapologetically his sound references Dion and The Belmonts ,Vince Taylor and his Playboys, The Marcels and classics Movie scores such as West Side Story, The Wanderers, The Incident and Music To Read The Pretenders by Joe Rene Complex. Morricone’s string musicians and the legendary voice of Edda Dell’Orso On The Gambler there are numerous special guest appearances: First and foremost Ennio Morricone’s legendary vocalist Edda Dell’Orso, well known for her singing on the 60’s og 70’s Western soundtracks The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West og Giù la Testa. Dell’Orso sings on three songs on the album, while her husband, Giacomo Dell’Orso, has orchestrated the album and conducted a small group of Ennio Morricone’s string musicians under the name of Piccola Orchestra Cinefonica di Roma. With Alex Puddu on guitar, organ and piano, he is joined by Heidi Luke on drums, Henrik Mathiassen on contrabass, Mikael Fleron on saxophone, with Lukas Sherfey (The Movement) Stefan Moulvad (The Sandmen) and Anders Bruus (The Breakers) on electric guitar. Participating on lead vocals are: Steffen Westmark (The Blue Van - on two tracks), Peter Sandorff (Hola Ghost), Jess Møller Rasmussen (Taggy Tones), Duane Hobson (The Moonfires) and the Italian crooner Max Locci.

Still shrink wrapped but opened just to check the release.
Record is UNPLAYED!

Hailing from Roanoke, VA, Sam plays every instrument you put in front of him (from banjo to fiddle to harmonica to sitar) and he played everything you hear on the new record.

Sam also produced every track on the record himself and overdubbed each one – a technique he perfected since his dad first bought his older brother a Vestax four-track in 1993. On "Give My All," you can hear every part stop together perfectly in sync. Says Sam, “I was thinking about fading out the end of the song,” he says, “but instead I just left it to where everything stops on a dime.”

Curtis Harding says that soul music, and his music, speak for themselves. It's self-evident on the Atlanta artist's debut, Soul Power. The driving sound of his electrified Stratocaster, the foot-stomping backbeat and the lyrics swimming in reverb -- with something this flourishing, it's almost reductive to just dig around the roots. Harding's style was born in Michigan and bred on the road, a restless childhood spent singing gospel alongside an evangelizing mother, then cultivated in Atlanta, where he sang backup for CeeLo Green and befriended the Black Lips (he plays with Cole Alexander in Night Sun).

The release comes in a gatefold cover. Duke Ellington once said that there are 2 kinds of music: the good one and the bad one. With the compilation series “Shaolin Soul” we are always certain to be on the right side of the line since its 1st episode released in 1998 and which compiled two dozens of tracks sampled by RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan. Following a second episode in 2001 and a third one in 2014, the famous curator Uncle O is back to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Shaolin Soul series with a fourth episode compiling 22 tracks among the rarest and finest treats of soul music, because “everybody’s talking about the good ol’ days !”.