Funk | Soul Sale 363 Items

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.

The Sophomore Album From Canadian Duo Ghost Twin Brings Pop Hooks, Romantic Ballads, Heavy Anthems And Club Stompers.Four Years After Ghost Twin's Debut For Artoffact Records, The Winnipeg, Canada-Based Duo Returns With Love Songs For End Times, An Album That Promises To Bring Some Much Needed Cathartic Release Through A Prism Of Pop Hooks, Romantic Ballads, Heavy Anthems And Club Stompers. Ghost Twin Explores The Darkness Of Nostalgia On The New Album, Due Out On Artoffact On June 4th, An Approach That Signals A Turning Point For The Band. Karen And Jaimz Asmundson, Longtime Artistic Collaborators And Husband-And-Wife, Take Turns Crooning Fatalistic Lyrics As Elements Of 80s Synthpop, Industrial, German Techno, French House, And A Knack For Writing Earworms, Competing For Your Attention.

Straight from the original master tapes and remastered on Limited Edition Vinyl LP for the First Time Ever 'ScappoPerCantare' by Giuliano Sorgini is one of the finest titles in his vast production. New cover artwork designed by Eric Adrien Lee.

Another dream coming true! One of Giuliano Sorgini’s finest and most sought-after titles is finally available as an official LP reissue – the first ever – remastered from the original tapes.
Originally released in 1971 on the small library music imprint FAMA, which operated as a sub-label of RCA Italy, the record contains the original music written for Scappo per cantare, a small, pseudo-psychedelic ‘musicarello’ (musical comedy film) broadcast on RAI television and starring, among others, Italian singers Gianni Morandi and Mauro Lusini.
The only credited album artist is Sorgini, but it’s impossible not to perceive, in this record, the hand of his close friend and colleague Alessandro Alessandroni.
This should not come as a surprise. In the early 70s, the two composers and multi-instrumentalists had a fruitful collaboration that saw them, under the monikers Braen (Alessandroni) and Raskovich (Sorgini), produce an abundance of works together, most of which have now gained the recognition they deserve. These include, among others, two 7” singles from their band The Pawnshop, three records in the series Alle sorgenti delle civiltà (Folkmusic), the crime/noir library albums Quarta pagina (Usignolo) and Inchiesta giudiziaria (Octopus Records), as well as the LP Tempo Libero (Panda Records), which was released shortly after the record presented here and in some ways drew rhythmic inspiration from it.
While their collaboration remained unacknowledged on the original release of Scappo per cantare (this was not uncommon at the time, especially in the field of library music), the record sounds perfectly in line with other works composed by Alessandroni in the early 70s, such as Complesso Gisteri’s Mostra Collettiva (co-written with Oronzo De Filippi), or even a landmark album like Spontaneous, where Sorgini contributed to a handful of tracks.
So, yes, the sheer beauty of Scappo per cantare is the result of an incredible synergy between two heavyweights of Italian library music! Airy and sweeping melodies à la Zoo Folle, psychedelia à la Under Pompelmo, and various percussion instruments played by Sorgini seamlessly blend and fuse with elements and touches provided by Alessandroni.
More specifically, we find Alessandroni’s signature, melancholy whistle in “Desolazione”; the peaceful and dreamy sound of his 12-string guitar in “Scogliere” and “Con Amore”; the trademark harmonies of his vocal ensemble Cantori Moderni in the last two tracks mentioned and in “Per cantare”; and his ingenious use of distortion on his Fender Stratocaster in the suspenseful transitions “Concentrazione” and “Fantocci”, as well as in the frantic/hypnotic hippie numbers “Mordente” and “Fendente” (as a side note, it is worth remembering that Alessandroni experimented extensively with distortion in the rock-infused album Underground, co-written with De Filippi and released in 1971 under the moniker Braen’s Machine, probably a reference to British psychedelic band Soft Machine).
The creative relationship between Sorgini and Alessandroni was so symbiotic that it would be useless to try to identify in more detail their respective contributions to the sound of Scappo per cantare. The alchemy between these two musical geniuses is the key to the album’s exquisitely Italian mixture of cheerful lounge, sweet psychedelia and smooth easy listening.
To do justice to the quality of the music, this remastered reissue is enriched by a new artwork by Eric Adrian Lee, who drew inspiration from the psychedelic visual culture of the period in which the album was written and recorded.

Creole poetry, folk mysticism and heavy-grooving cosmic synths combine on this unprecedented survey of spiritual Martinique polymath Gratien Midonet’s first four albums.



“I always broke free from the rules, from codes being too narrow,” says poet, musician and sonic shaman Gratien Midonet. “I have always had this sense of peaceful knowledge that there is no separation between genres, beings and universal things.”



For Midonet, pushing musical boundaries was less a choice than an extension of his spirit. A self-taught guitarist and composer,



drawing on his childhood memories of bélé and beguine rhythms, Midonet’s musical life developed in parallel to his academic and spiritual pursuits. Studying philosophy and psychopedagogy in France, it was his fascination with pan-Africanism and animism which fuelled the transcendent energy of his music. Although Midonet honed his sound in France, the four albums he released during the



late ‘70s and ‘80s were heavily inspired by diasporic nostalgia, or what he describes as the “smells and colours… subliminal noises… fruity notes, the memories of funeral wakes, the bombastic organ of the cathedral and the gasps of the drums” of his childhood home on the Caribbean island of Martinique.



Fittingly, it’s there that Midonet achieved cult status for the title track of his 1979 debut, Van An Lévè, which became a protest anthem for the island’s independence movement, and was briefly censored by the French authorities. Look no further than ‘Mari Rhont Ouve La Pot’, which opens this collection, to hear the propulsive mix of cosmic synths, acoustic folk, and Creole lyricism that became the essence of Midonet’s sound. Released on Martinique label Touloulou, Van An Lévè was followed in 1980 by L’inité, whose tropical acid folk (‘M’en ka Monté Mon’) and majestic, violin-led melodies (‘Kannaval Sakré Pou Tout Z’Heb Poussé’) confirmed Midonet’s unique and intuitive approach to composition.



Not content to skip effortlessly between genres and influences, Midonet also began pushing the boundaries of the album form itself. His third album, Bourg La Folie, released in 1984, was a soundtrack for a lost film about the mysticisms of carnival, while his fourth, Fô Ou Tchimbé, took the form of a ‘conte musical’ (a narrated story accompanied by music) presented at the Pompidou Centre, and spoke to Midonet’s literary prowess as a fierce proponent of the Creole language.

Hannah Macklin’s debut LP ‘Mu’ is a glittering piece of cosmic orchestral neo-soul. Jazz-informed vocals & production merge triphop and prog influences and join the dots between Homegenic era Bjork or Portishead and contemporary artists like Solange. What’s Mu about? Mu is about everything: Songs about heartbreak and parting share the album with songs marveling at the scale of the universe. Mu is a concept from Zen and Chan Buddhism that means: “nothingness” and also, “pure awareness.” The awareness at the source of all things. In Hannah’s words: “There is so much life in every moment. Endless patterns, algorithms and instances repeating and changing and adapting. Spiraling outwards from the source. What source? The source.” In search of the source, Hannah has composed and arranged an undefinable, cinematic album that leads the listener on a winding path through her imagination. Sonically as well as thematically, Mu is an album of extremes and lofty ambitions. Fragile and delicate vocal and violin textures contrast with crunchy noisescapes and brooding synthesizers. Hannah’s commanding voice shares the spotlight with a string section and is backed by spacious production featuring many acoustic instruments. Sonically, producer Nick Herrera has brought a reassuring chunkiness to this unplugged palette, in particular the head nodding drums that anchor Hannah’s celestial musings . Like a film soundtrack or a symphony Mu is best listened to and understood as a whole - it circles back to themes and refrains and re-examines them. Sometimes a song is a song, sometimes it’s a soundscape dreaming of a song. “When making this album, I had a specific concept for how I wanted the music to sound. I don’t mean in terms of genre… it was more of a visceral, sensory concept which I knew I could only realise by allowing myself to experiment and create simultaneously, believing in my rough ideas enough to grow them, to weave them into stories... I have decided to call the album “Mu” to signify the empty chasm I allowed to hold within me whilst these songs were born."

Limited to 300 copies

Heart-soul & Inspiration Featuring Vince Howard - I’M Gonna Love YOU More

Mythical band ‘Heart-Soul & Inspiration’ and their band leader, L.A. drummer and producer Vince Howard cut their self-titled (and only) album in 1974 for the Los Angeles-based Viscojon label. The result was an astonishing collection of music filled with playful sexy moans, climaxing grooves and soulful hooks.

One of the album’s highlights (and clocking in at an epic eleven minutes) is ‘I’m Gonna Love You More” - a tantric reimagining of Barry White’s 1973 sexually charged classic. Where White was content delivering a subtle and syrupy innuendo, Howard transformed the break-heavy track into a meandering funk workout.

We are proud to present ‘I’m Gonna Love You More’ on a 7” for the first time - cut at 33⅓ RPM over two sides (Parts One & Two)

* Originally released in 1980 * New remastering * Japanese Obi-strip A Man For All Reasons' is classic album by American jazz keyboardist Hilton Felton released through his own label in 1980, and it is acclaimed not only for its musical reputation but also as an important work featured by many DJs and vinyl collectors in the rare groove culture since the 1990s. It is still a rare groove classic. P-vine Japan is pleased to announce the reissue of this masterpiece, featuring the superb jazz funk 'Bee Bop Boogie,' still considered a rare groove classic, with the latest re-mastering!

The original 12” version of this badboy will set you back near on £150, so it’s a much welcomed official, remastered reissue. A favourite from the likes of Sadar Bahar and Mr Scruff you’ll be hearing this one a lot come summertime.

Year Of The Witch was born in transit. In the interest of self-sufficiency, HXXS - aka Jeannie Colleene and Gavin Neves - initially recorded their debut album during a six month tour spent living out of their van. When inspiration struck (and it did so often), they'd record in parking lots, hotel rooms, laundromats - anywhere they happened to pull over. What emerged from these pit stops, strangely enough, was an album about moving forward. As with much of the art created in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Year Of The Witch sizzles with the fresh sting of political anguish. Instead of firing off platitudes about a nation divided, however, Neves and Colleene choose to look inward at how this divide affects familial relationships. On "Hard To Tell," the duo sing, `it runs in the family, and they spread it all over, like forest to fire'. Like the California wildfires that were a fixture of their childhood - Neves is from San Jose and Colleene hails from Bakersfield - beliefs are inherited passively, and have equal capacity for destruction. And while the political climate of the time is a palpable force, the album remains anchored, always, in the personal. "I'm not asking for sympathy," they sing - with the help of TV On The Radio's Kyp Malone - "cut loose these ties." Year Of The Witch finds HXXS rifling through the ashes, working to salvage the roots.The concept of rebirth isn't just a theme on the album, however, it's also part of the process that created it. Back in 2017, after their initial roadside recordings were complete, the hard drive containing them was stolen. HXXS were forced to re-record the entire LP on a time crunch, largely from memory. But necessity bred invention, and this loss created a sense of sonic urgency that only strengthens the tracks. The result is a sonic roadmap to resilience: electronic noise punk for the fake news generation. Built on haunting loops and frantic, insistent vocals, YOTW navigates uneasiness with razor-sharp precision. There is anger, to be sure, bu...