Funk | Soul 240 Items

“The only time you wear a Tuxedo is when it’s time to party.”

So says legendary West Coast player Snoop Dogg on the opening track of “Tuxedo II”. The blessing of the Doggfather is of special importance to Mayer Hawthorne and Jake One, whose second album as a duo finds them at the forefront of a new wave of gangster boogie - one that owes as much to G-funk as P-funk.This is the territory of pre- and post-hydraulic low riders: a mélange of Cali boom-bap, analog synth bass and elegant disco that resonates truth and authenticity in an era where so many are faking the funk.

Bonding over a shared love of Chic, Parliament, and the other signs in the greater funk Zodiac, Mayer Hawthorne (Aquarius) and Jake One (Taurus) were early predictors of the sea changes that American music would undergo in 2016. Their first release of 2015 debuted at #1 on iTunes America’s RnB charts, christened as “Dance Floor Catnip” by the Boston Globe, and “Pure disco-funk hot fire” by Okayplayer. Considering their individual successes (Mayer’s four solo albums, Jake’s production work for the likes of Drake, Future, The Weeknd, and De La Soul) and five Grammy nominations between the two of them, it’s no surprise that their powers combined have yet again yielded a bevy of absolute slappers that are packaged perfectly for dance parties in 2017. The material here, while wholly original, is an exercise in honoring its forebears. “Tuxedo II” recalls the future funk wobble of Zapp, Gap, Jam/ Lewis and Junie Morrison, while nodding lyrically to Mtume, Jodeci and Cameo.The crystallization of the album’s concept comes courtesy of its message of universal love; thanks to the signature combination of soul and pop sensibility that have come to define Mayer’s hooks.

“You gotta do what you love...” says Mayer in a recent interview with Nordstrom’s style blog, one of the many fashion outlets to cover Tuxedo’s rise. After all - the transcendental ritual of the party and the rippling self affirmation of the funk are of one spirit: the spirit of self love...of self expression. “Tuxedo II” is a modern testament to unity and positivity in trying times. It is a reminder that the dance floor will always be there to welcome you, whoever you are.

Two essential disco and soul cuts from Silvia Striplin orginally released in 1980. Produced by Roy Ayers.

A. 'Give Me Your Love' An umptemp disco groover for the more discerning dancefloor. Sylvia’s glorious vocals float over a sumptuous uptempo Roy Ayers tracj. Sampled by Armand Van Helden, Deepdown and Madd Rapper.

B. 'You Can't Turn Me Away' A soul breakbeat classic. Deep downtempo business, this shows Roy Ayers at the height of his powers and Sylvia more than does the track justice. Beautiful!

The instantly recognisable bassline was sampled by Notorious BIG/Junior Mafia on ‘Get Money’. Also sampled by Naughty By Nature and Backstreet Boys.

Limited edition for Record Store Day 2017!

Check out this in demand Latin Funk floor fillers from the group that launched the careers of Eddie and Charlie Palmieri, two giants in the field of Latin fueled jazz fusion playing tohether with one of the most prolific players of the day Bernard Purdie, providing the drums appearing here on 7-inch for the first time in full length versions

Finally available on single LP format! All 5 parts of Dam-Funks magnum opus!

15 newly remastered tracks. Great psychedelic brazilian soul!

Fantasy (Shelter DJ Mix) / Can't Hide Love (MAW Album Mix)

Re-issued and remastered. Genre - Funk/Jazz/Soul/Psyche. 'Life & Love' is the third album from Skinshape (with 'Filoxiny' being his fourth). Written, Recorded and Produced by Will Dorey at the Arch Studio, London, and in his bedroom. Great melting pot of styles and tunes, D.I.Y. Funk Soul Jazz. Recommended if you're into Khruangbin. Skinshape is the project of British musician William Dorey. The sound has roots in many genres but in particular 1960s-0s Funk, Soul, Reggae, Psychedelic Rock, Afrobeat and Folk. Skinshape grew out of a love for old music and the way it sounded. Initially Dorey experimented with samples (especially drum breaks) to create instrumental Hip-Hop/Trip-Hop tracks but then later started to play around with tape machines as a means to create his own 'samples'. This process gave birth to Skinshape with all elements being recorded by Dorey since the first self-titled album released in 2014. Aside from the Skinshape project Dorey was bassist for the band Palace from 2014-2017 and runs a reggae label called Horus Records based in North London.

Check out this essential garage Zamrock/Soul/Funk single as the first official reissue of the celebrated band’s one and only album!

The musical style that became known as Zamrock came to embody the economic despair that followed the 1973-1974 oil crisis, which flung Zambia into recession and exacerbated a wide range of social tensions. Much of Zamrock also captured the controversy of wider politics in Africa and the world. Perhaps the finest example of this is Black Power by The Peace. - The Guardian The Boyfriends, from Kitwe’s Chamboli Mine Township, supplied the founding members for Zamrock’s most famous band, Witch, and kick started one of Zamrock’s best bands, Peace. Their sole Zamrock entry, “Black Power”, recorded at Malachite Film Studio circa 1973/4 and issued circa 1975, sounds like nothing else in the Zamrock canon: a lost message drifiting from the flower power era, imbued with a fiery Zambian voice.

Reissue of these sampled to death classics! Should be in every decent collection…

Robbie M of Midnight Express (Danger Zone) is back with his latest single! This is the first track from Robbie's Upcoming LP.

Following up on the success of Lady Wray’s solo debut album Queen Alone, we are
proud to give you another 45 offering, this time showing another side of Nicole.
Known worldwide for her early career as a Hip Hop / R&B singer, then more recently
for her more matured Soul inspired writing, the A side of this one “Underneath My
Feet” shows just how hard it is to put Lady Wray in a box. If you haven’t seen her live
show, you may have no idea that she has a healthy bad ass Rock and Roll side to her,
commanding crowds with a raucousness that likens Betty Davis. Underneath My Feet
is a tough blend of glam rock drums and guitar stabs that Nicole takes to like a fish to
water. A self proclaimed voodoo woman, putting a spell on the listener, warning all of
her unbridled power.
The B side is the heart wrenching Guilty, a song Wray wrote to cope with the
incarceration of her brother. One listen and it is impossible to doubt the sincerity,
again showing Cole’s songwriting prowess with imagery of no one to cheers with, and
not wanting to experience the comforts of home knowing her brother was locked up in
a cell. A solid 2 sider showing a different side of Lady Wray than she is typically known
for all wrapped up in a beautiful picture sleeve cover.

After a strong debut in 2016, Durand Jones & The Indications are
hitting the road this spring with a new 45 from their debut LP. The
lead album cut, “Make A Change” is powerful message soul at its
fnest! Never more powerful and never more relevant! Meanwhile,
the B-side is a cookin’ lowrider soul jam featuring the sweet falsetto
of drummer Aaron Frazer. A two-sided burner.

"Psychic Welfare" was produced by Pink Skull and Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, War On Drugs) between the band's Philadelphia studio and Brooklyn, NY. Contending with the seismic swells in both the macro and micro worlds around him, Grefe refracted the polluted waves in a fantastical fit to write the 13 songs of "Psychic Welfare". The album is a map of time and space portals in which the listener can navigate from the corroded corners of machinated life to boundless, amorphous space in mere seconds. Across the album's pull-out poster artwork for "Psychic Welfare" is a hand-scrawled poem by the late NYC sage Ira Cohen entitled "Blind Assemblage". In the poem, Cohen describes the decay of society and struggles to find civility within tragedy, a sentiment mirrored in Grefe's lyrical content of Psychic Welfare, if not masked by a new found pop propensity. The lead track on the album, "Hot Bubblegum," a Television-inspired piece of pop perfectly pushes this dichotomy of psychotic playfulness. "Mu" is a sprawling instrumental spread of blissed-out 80s funk, complete with a tin rooftop sax solo by Billy Dufala (Man Man). "Janine Aubergine" fictionalizes Grefe's girlfriend's bluegrass fiddle-playing aunt as a psychedelic maven over a tango groover, while "Bee Nose (Put Yr Face On)" is a woozy, hazy late-night phone call from the warped Scottish countryside circa 1998. "Summer Reading" feels like a Transformer-era Lou Reed bullying Mark E. Smith around a disco bouncey castle. Tracks from Psychic Welfare were remixed by Brassica, Higamos Hagamos, Ray Mang, and Worst Friends. Each of these remixes will be released as single support and included alongside additional original tracks as bonus downloads. The artwork of Psychic Welfare is taken from a a series of visual synth feedback experiments conducted by the band and video artist Adam Carrigan. The LP edition features a 48" x 96" heavy-stock pull out poster.

Side A's cover of "Tearz" is as much an homage to the Wendy Rene sample as it is to the Wu-Tang Clan track. The song starts as a glazed over cover of "after laughter, comes tears" with Shannon Wise of The Shacks singing Wendy Rene's timeless mantra. Halfway through, the mood dramatically shifts and the drums and organ that drive the original RZA sample take over. A dubbed out Lee Fields taps in like only he can, and the song spirals into outer space.Side B finds EMA dipping into the deeper side of the Wu catalog with Raekwon's "Verbal Intercourse." Mixing the grimy, gritty production aesthetic of the original with elements of dubbed out reggae, El Michels Affair once again pushes the definition of a "cover" and truly makes it a tune of their own.

The past few years have found Sean McBride, the artist behind Martial Canterel, in a state of flux, ebbing back and forth between material displacement and musical aestheticism. His expert pedigree in electronic sound and arrangement bridges the gap created by an undecidability between life at home and abroad His new album, Lost At Sea, is an attempt for the artist to locate this elusive common ground.The album's introductory track, Giving Up, has all of the hallmarks that Martial Canterel has utilized in the past_melodic chorus, upbeat rhythm and classic sequential dynamism. Where the song diverges is in its core theme of nature: nature's return to a period of restoration after the failures and recklessness of humankind.The slower pace of songs like Scampia and Puszta yearn for McBride's complex love affair with far flung destinations. Re-evaluating the political strife and social unrest in these historical locations, McBride delves deeper into political and geological reference points creating symbolic representations using mechanized percussion, white noise and various sine waves.The conceptual nature of Lost at Sea reaches even deeper depths within the waveforms of Astralize, a track based upon academic Donna Haraway's pre-civilized theories of human neglect after the `azstralization'.

Yet another highly in-demand 12" from the Philadelphia International stable and an artist whose records never go out of date! This is a killer double-sided beauty with the frenetic and jazzy "Life On Mars" from his debut 1976 album on the top-side and the mellow all-time classic and soul boy anthem "The Sweetest Pain" from 1979 on the flip.
Two very different sides of a great artist, both of which show the level of diversity that he was capable of producing. The last legitimate release of this was back 1999 and a Mint copy will currently set you back circa £50, if you can ever find one.
Fully remastered on limited edition 180 gram heavyweight vinyl.

The 7" comes with a free Funky Chimes 45rpm adapter.

Classics by James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes & others get a rework courtesy of Maceo & The WDR Big Band!

Detailed liner notes, insert with pictures. Expertly remastered sound.

Attention: the sticker says "incl. booklet", but there's no booklet inside!

Now-Again Records is proud to present "Back From The Brink", the only legitimately licensed collection of the godfather of Iranian psychedelic rock, Kourosh Yaghmaei. Known within the Iranian diaspora simply by his first name, Kourosh’s Pre-Revolution recordings were thought lost after Islamic fundamentalists took control of Iran. They weren’t: Kourosh had protected them – along with key ephemera from the 70’s. Their collection here - spread over a 3-LP - bolstered by Kourosh’s first person recollections of Iran’s 70s rock scene and its death after the Revolution, tells the story of an immensely talented artist’s desire to persevere in the face of terrible adversity.

Got an 8.4 from Pitchfork!

Al Massrieen: Disco, Funk and modernized Arabic Pop from Egypt

In the beginning of Habibi Funk, our search was focussed on vinyl records. Around a year ago though, we got to the point where we realized that it became substantially harder to discover music, that we enjoyed and hadn’t heard before. It became apparent that it was time to start looking for other formats. Cassette tapes were the obvious alternative. These were introduced in the arabic world around the late 1970s. In some countries they took over a bit earlier, in others a bit later, but eventually they pushed the vinyl format out of the market in the 1980s. In Egypt this trend already even started in the late 1970s.

Al Massrieen was one of the first bands I learned about once I discovered the tape format for myself. They were really popular in Egypt in the 1970s and the more of their music I found on either tapes or Arabic pirate mp3 sites, the more I was becoming a fan. Only very few bands from the region can match the band’s versatility as well as their strive for innovation. Hany Shenoda is the man behind the Al Massrieen band. He is a reknown figure of the Egyptian music scene and has worked with everyone from Abdel Halim Hafez to Mohamed Mounir. Al Massrieen was his attempt to introduce his ideas of modernizing Egyptian music, heavily encouraged by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt's only winner of the Nobel Price for literature) after discussing his ideas with him.
Al Massrieen's sound goes from lush disco like “Sah” to psych rock like “Horreya” or incredible jazz fused pop on songs such as “Edba Mn Gded”. I was shocked to realize the band seemed to be hardly known outside Egypt, even though I feel they're at least on the same level as Ahmed Fakroun. An relative obscurity which I largely attribute to the fact that their releases never have been pressed on vinyl (apart from a Greece best of LP which wasn’t a strong compilation of the group’s songs). One way or another it felt like this band and especially their composer, band leader and overall brain Hany Shenoda was in need to get some recognition outside of Egypt. The release is fully licensed from the band and comes with an extensive booklet with liner notes, interviews and unseen photos.

As humans, we are aware of our inner beast and should therefore be able to control it. We understand our hard-wired primal urges and why they exist in an evolutional sense. We understand the relationship between mind and body. Highly evolved and intelligent, we should be able to recognize these genetic hangovers and control them as a means to act positively and move forward as a compassionate species. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Recent global eve...

The Afro Soul Prophecy project welcomes the Spring of 2017 with a series of two exclusive 7-inch records, for a total of four fully instrumental new compositions. This second 45rpm of the series consists of the main track “Daddy’s Groove”, a catchy funky song with wah-wah guitars and a long middle sax solo part, paired with the romantic slow-paced “Let Me Be Your Lover”. Once again Alex Puddu has lent his creativity and put his music signature on these tracks, for an exciting and charming result!

A 7" of the mega classics!

Original founding members of New England's premier reggae band, The I-Tones; Jon Gorr (Keyboardist), Tony Allen (Drummer), and RAM (Vocalist) released their side project "It's No Lie" in 1983 on Massmedia Records.

All new Bobby Womack LP. Produced by Damon Albarn and Richard Russell!

The first ever retrospective in the west of one of Japan's guitar pioneers, Takeshi Terauchi. Charting his career from the surf boom, to groovy 60s instrumentals, fuzz freak-outs and funk rock.

The pop world lost one of the most important soul singers ever to grace the world on 1st April 1984. Marvin Gaye has left behind a series of fantastic hits plus a big handful of tracks which deserve the title of masterpiece, all Collected on this album.

New label Smiling C starts off with a compilation LP of released and unreleased works by the Arabic rapper, Shams Dinn.
For their first ever reissue, Smiling C connects with the Arabic rapper Shams Dinn to release a compilation his best songs, including the hit "Hedi Bled Noum". The compilation covers his entire career of with songs made between 1985-1990, most of which went unreleased at the time. One of the few Moroccan rappers to ever be recorded on vinyl back in the 80s, Shams Dinn was a pioneer of Arabic flow. Starting his career because he wanted to be a positive light for the Arabic immigrants living in France. He earned his status participating in freestyle competitions, and performing in small clubs around Europe. His career came to a turning point when he was asked by a major label to record a full LP. Unfortunately, the label decided they didn't want to promote Arabic music (largely because of the Gulf War) - and asked Shams to translate the Arabic to French. Shams Dinn wouldn't stand for that, and he was dropped from the label. The following years he worked at a school, teaching kids how to rap and express themselves through words.
The reissue comes with newly imagined art, and an inner sleeve with interview and photos.

This was the Fan Club 45 for the Whitefield Brother's Earthology album!

Smoove is the archetypal B-Boy made good. Despite his huge international success with Smoove & Turrell and his ability to craft jazz, soul, latin, hip hop and funk into world beating dancefloor killers – he can still be found every weekend he's not playing live jumping on a plane or a train to go and DJ in Germany, Italy, Ibiza or just down to Manchester, Bristol or London wherever his diary tells him he has to go..
Wherever it is, his incredible skills behind the decks mean that he gets asked back and the breadth of the music seamlessly joined by his turntablist skills jumps from disco to funk, jazz to soul, hip hop to house and back again.
The endless flights, trains and hotel rooms are dead time to some DJ's but Smoove is always creating new tunes for his set on the fly and working his different influences into the remixes and productions he is currently on. There were at least 40 remixes that could have been included on this album but in the end he chose the ones that worked best together and made the album flow like one of his legendary DJ sets.

Just 3 Words: Stone Cold Classic!

Nearly 40 years after releasing two of the greatest funk 7-inches of all time, the breakbeat masterpieces "Space Funk" and "Midnight Theme," the legendary Manzel is back on Fraternity Records with another sureshot double-sider. Originally comprised of Manzel Bush on keys, Larry VanDyke on guitar and late Steve Garner on drums, the 2017 incarnation of the group adds powerhouse Jay Mumford, p.k.a. J-Zone, in the drum chair and is lean and funky as ever. "High And Tight" is a classic party jam, complete with chanted vocals and a couple drum breaks that establish the new man in the trio is no joke on the skins. "Standing On Mars" continues the favored space-related vibe of Manzel's past releases, an uptempo jazzy instrumental dancefloor mover that simply cooks, with Manzel doing double duty on electric piano and organ.

In name, The Zone Identity sounds like a long forgotten band comprised of college students from the age of psychedelia that released one obscure 45 that lives on with a mortgage-busting price tag. It’s about 50 years too late for a story that cool – The Zone Identity is just the latest musical endeavor from producer, drummer, DJ, writer, multi-instrumentalist, (occasional) MC and music industry outsider, J-Zone.

After the unexpected cult success of The Du-Rites, J-Zone’s 2016 funk offering with guitarist Pablo Martin, the New York native follows with a different take on the funk for the inaugural offering of The Zone Identity. Working with a wide array of different musicians with different backgrounds for The Zone Identity makes for a more funk-jazz-inspired and solo driven take on J-Zone’s trademark drums and production. This debut 7” features jazz guitarist Ed Littman and Hammond B-3 organist Bennett Paster from Fraternity Music Group house band, The U.B.'s, as well as J-Zone’s go-to percussionist, Ray May, on congas. Littman and J-Zone split the bass playing duties. An avid funk 45 collector, J-Zone uses both sides of the release to pay homage to his musical heroes and favorite records with a spin on two of his favorite tunes. While the A-Side re-works “Funk-I-Tus,” an obscure late ‘60s offering from L.A.-based Warm Excursion, the b-side will be more familiar with its nod to “Let The Music Take Your Mind,” an early hit for J-Zone’s favorite band, Kool and the Gang. The original story is more exciting, but the reality is easier to believe. It’s also cheaper.