Nu-Jazz | Broken Beat 353 Items

With seven releases - including this one - on Schema Records and three - considering also the Cosmorama project - on Milano 2000, Stefano Tirone has tightened his collaboration with the Edizioni Ishtar group. He is today one of the label’s most popular artists, with more than 300.000 monthly listeners and millions of plays of his acclaimed hits on Spotify – more than 3 million overall for his recent digital singles “Blow My Mind” and “No Meio Do Samba”. His previous full-length Body & Soul shows influences from the early ’90s British acid jazz scene and his deep love for the ’70s soul, Brazilian and jazz music that constitute the basic foundations of S-Tone Inc. Here, instead of asking other artists to remix his tracks, Stefano has decided to do that himself, reworking in a nu-disco key the entire “Body & Soul” record, herein named “The Disco Experience”. The title and the graphic layout take us to a period in time between late ’70s and early ’80s when the artist as a teenager, completely absorbed by the sound of disco music, used to go to clubs and discotheques to listen and dance to those unmistakable sonic frequencies. In those years the American DJ Larry Levan and the Italian Mozart and Baldelli used to play their music in front of crowded disco halls, while record labels such as Prelude and Solar set the standards with artists such as D-Train, Sharon Redd, Whispers, Shalamar and their soulful vocals combined to strong basslines, funky guitars and uptempo rhythms. This is how “Body & Soul - The Disco Experience” was born, as an homage to the music that Stefano used to immerse in during those adventurous years, with a few exceptions: “No Meio Do Samba”, a tribute to the house sound of Frankie Knuckles in the early ’90s, and the two downbeat tracks “Flying Away”, with its essential R&B arrangement, and “Midnight Sun”, that keeps its cinematic mood but with a more funky attitude. “Odoya” is the only track remixed by The Invisible Session in a minimal spacey disco arrangement that fits perfectly with the overall sound of the album.

Ruth Koleva hails from Sofia, Bulgaria, and has been a TV star and singing out concert halls for years. She has also long been singing on some superb broken beat and nu-jazz records while working with top-level production talent and having her tunes remixed by Zed Bias, Kaidi Tatham, Mark de Clive-Lowe and Eric Lau. The neo-soul star's Ruth album gets a special anniversary edition release here with four heart-melting and textbook neo-soul tunes on the A-side then some super remixes on the flip. This is timeless stuff that works on the heart and the heel in equal measure.

Heller Tag is the debutalbum of Berlin-based jazz collective Conic Rose.
The young musicians come from the most diverse musical backgrounds: their other projects include names such as arena-filling German pop stars Clueso or Samy Deluxe but also Jazz legends such as Michael Wollny or Joy Denalane.

What connects them is their love to explore, create, redefine and effortlessly move between abstraction and accessibility, high quality sound and the beauty of the imperfect - interweaving electronic elements, cinematic jazz, vibey soundscapes and hints of art rock with eclectic, zeitgeisty influences.
Their releases so far as well as the few shows they played on the back of their debut EP (2020) exceeded all expectations, attracting the attention of industry professionals all the way from the UK or USA.

All songs are written, recorded and produced by Conic Rose in their own recording studio in the Wedding neighbourhood of Berlin.

Reissue of "Art Of Moz" originally released in 1984 is the first official Moz-Art album aka Claudio Rispoli,hystoric Dj of Baia Degli Angeli.

Alex Attias, El Mustang Project is back with a new album. This second opus features full of new collaborations with on vocals Cecilia Stalin, Rouhangeze and Desney Bailey. Alex worked as well with the keyboardist and instrumentalist genuises Sohan Wilson and Hajime Yoshizawa and with Saxophonist friend Arthur Donnot and Alina Bzhezhinska on Harp. This Album has been made during a two years period between 2019 and 2021. This is a reflection of the various musical styles Alex was listening at home enjoying producing during the lockdown. The 8 first tracks feature a selection ranging from jazz to disco without the dancefloor in mind. It was a various and distant collaborations for the first time and the result is a selection of 12 tracks “ but only 8 for the limited vinyl album”. The remaing tracks are on the ep “life” that came out late december 2021.

Life is Worth Living, officially a second LP from El Niño Andrés, comes 9 years after its debut LP "Más Dinero Más Problemas", but sound wise it's still walking on the borderline between house, jazz and soul. El Niño's usual combination of Rhodes and Moog improvisations on top of house and jazz-funk drum-lines is present on all album tracks, with live sax additions on "Come Closer" and "Mercy Mercy". Album is an uptempo affair, but as usual with Jackie Brown releases, not your straightforward 4x4 routine - poly-rhythms and percussion drive "Wasting Your Life" and "Soul", while "The Approach of Midnight" sounds like it could have been placed straight into a Tenet soundtrack LP.

Celebrating the tenth anniversary of Summer Dance Forever - Amsterdam’s insanely popular international hip hop festival - Super-Sonic Jazz has teamed up with James Rudie & Evm128’s UK sound-culture imprint Dance Regular to release a ten-track explosion of organic soulful house, broken beat, and bass-heavy uplifting cuts, ripe for the dancefloor. A sterling compilation featuring the who’s-who of fresh and upcoming UK talent, the EP is a coming together of like-minded worlds, full of highly charged dynamic rhythms, driving melodies, garage-like beats and an impassioned and authentic joie de vivre that perfectly matches the festival’s energetic spirit, and sets the tone for its equally impressive programme.

The brainchild of DJs James Rudie and Evm128, Dance Regular was born out of an East London event series that focussed on soulful, bass and body music. Alumni of the CoOp Presents Selectors Assemble, IG Culture and Alex Phountzi’s championing of the Bruk movement, James Rudie & Evm128 have a set a like-minded course to channel the spirt of UK body music culture, with this 10-track EP a fiery illustration of some of the talents at their fingertips. Throughout the 10-energetic tracks you’ll discover the likes of Trev, Entek, Cengiz, and many more fresh, global acts with a penchant for stirring broken beat productions, and deep, soulful melodies. Living at the intersection of garage and house music, with a deep underlying appreciation of jazz, it seems only fitting that the UK crew deliver this choice collection of cuts through the Super-Sonic Jazz imprint.

This year, understandably, the crews behind the tenth edition of Summer Dance Forever will be taking the festival actives online. Normally held at Paradiso, the inner-city urban dance festival would normally bring in participants from across the globe for nine-days of battles, parties, and workshops. Over the course of the past ten years, Summer Dance Forever has welcomed the likes of Dam Funk, Theo Parrish, and DJ Spinna into its home at Paradiso. One face that has always been a constant behind the decks has been Dutch stalwart, and one-part Super-Sonic Jazz founder KC the Funkaholic. The label, festival, and events series has become the home for new and exciting jazz and soul sounds from The Netherlands, in addition to showcasing fresher, soulful global sounds, including IG Culture who debuted his Likwid Continual Space Motion on the label this year. With such a combined focus in harbouring new talent and love for deeper jazz influenced driving-dance music, the collaboration is befit for the honouring of such an important, cultural and respected institution.

On June 16th, 2023, Steven Julien and Kyle Hall return with their first EP together in ten years, Crown. The record follows earlier EPs the duo created under their former alias Funkinevil, 2013's Ignorant and 2012's Night/Dusk. The record once again brings together two artists from opposite sides of the pond—Julien hailing from London and Hall representing Detroit—with a shared love for soul in its purest essence. Opening "Page 1", a pitched-down vocal by James Massiah pronounces, "My plan—won't let you take it from hand." That alone could be considered the nut graph of a record about taking ownership, created by two vanguards in the electronic music scene that, a decade ago, insisted on infusing their music with soul in a commercial club circuit lacking in it. Assembled from a few years-worth of studio jams in Julien's studio, Crown dials up the staticky warmth present on earlier Funkinevil tracks like "Dusk" and "In The Grid." Across seven songs, Funkinevil shaves off some of their tougher elements, instead shooting for pastoral melodies and funky basslines, like on "Page 2", where Vicky Flint's flute flutters sleepily over breaks and a groovy Korg synthesizer. But the atmosphere on the EP is also grander than ever—on "Page 5," Cloud's wistful melisma soars over Flint's bleating saxophone and wandering sci-fi synths. With all this attention to funky musicality, it's only fitting that two legends specializing in the craft would land on the B-side—Däm Funk revs up "Page 3" with a slamming kick and his unmistakable coolness, and Reggie B turns "Page 5" into a sludgy, jazzy dance party. In the words of Julien, "I think a lot of people have forgotten about what this whole thing is about. Musically, artistry and everything. So I'm happy this is what we represent on this project."

Neroli is back with a new album project by long time hero and music mastermind Kirk Degiorgio. This project links the Planetary Folklore aesthetics and Kirk’s praised contribution to The First Circle, the beautiful ‘Leave Everything Behind’, in a very spiritual and ethereal way. Born after witnessing Pharaoh Sanders performance at We Out Here festival in 2022, ‘Robe Of Dreams’ represents Degiorgio’s tribute to the artists that shaped his musical world.