Jazz de Ville

Al Kent - Disco Love 3 – Even More Rare Disco & Soul Uncovered

Disco Love is a series of fabulous disco records that you have probably never heard of. All superb records presented to you by the legendary Al Kent from the unlikeliest disco haven of Glasgow.

Al’s been buying records a few years now, usually ignoring the in-demand or more obvious titles and searching a little harder for fabulous disco records that you have probably never heard of. Disco Love 3 contains just some of them.

Not only that, but most of them are exclusive, unissued re-edits, spliced specially for this album by Mr. Kent. And there is also a bonus Disco mix by Al Kent of all the tracks.

Robin Grant & the Standard - Off Label

Kamaal Williams - Wu Hen

Kamaal Williams has always been a man of many talents. From the shuffling Peckham house style of his output as Henry Wu to the deep, expansive jazz he made in Yussef Kamaal, each new Williams release gives us a greater sense of his musical aesthetic while simultaneously expanding his sonic palette ever further.

With Wu Hen, his sophomore solo record, Williams locks down his multifaceted output to a single term - Wu Funk. At its core, Wu Funk is a sort of Millennial take on jazz fusion - funk-flecked grooves often dictate the state of play here, and there is a similar painterliness to many of the timbres and chords. An old-school sensibility is even acknowledged by name on third track ‘1989’.

However, Wu Funk is very much a style of the here and now, one that reflects the wide-ranging aesthetic of the London jazz scene in which Williams has come up. ‘Toulouse’ and ‘Pigalle’ are gorgeous, strutting instrumentals; ‘Hold On’ and ‘Street Dreams’ are weightless spiritual numbers that ascend to the heavens, bolstered by guest spots from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Lauren Faith respectively; the dance-oriented sensibilities of the Henry Wu records are shown to be in good nick on several occasions, most prominently in the ebullient breakbeat fusion of ‘One More Time’.

Wu Hen! Got you all in check! Jazz boundary-pusher Kamaal Williams returns with a set of vivid ‘Wu Funk’ on his sophomore LP.

Immanuel Wilkins - Omega

Bettye LaVette - Blackbirds

Sugarloaf Gangsters - Temarasa

2 great tracks by the Sugarloaf Gangsters on connaisseur label GAMM. Get it before sold out!

Tarika Blue - Tarika Blue

They say that if you’re a friend to everyone you’re a friend to no one. Well, in the case of Tarika Blue, here is an album that roundly disproves that maxim. A record that delivers to fusion, soul, jazz and disco aficionados alike, Tarika Blue’s ability to cover all these bases with equal skill is quite an achievement. The balance locked in its grooves are testament to the astonishing musical range found in the artists who perform with such aplomb. 

Tarika Blue was formed in 1973 by Phil Clendenin, a keyboard session player and studio engineer from New York, while he was a student at Syracuse University. Centred around the core unit of Clendenin, drummer Kevin Atkins and bassist Barry Coleman, the group was augmented by various passing members that included sax players Marvin Blackman (also worked with Rashied Ali) and Justo Almario, a variety of vocalists including Irene Datcher and Dolores Smith as well as some stellar guitarists who would go on the assume cult status: James Mason and Ryo Kawasaki. It’s interesting to note that around 74-75, Clendenin was also a member of another group called the Big Apple Band, featuring a certain Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards… whatever happened to them? In 1974 Tarika Blue were signed to New York jazz label, Chiaroscuro Records, founded by Hank O’Neal. Their first album, ‘The Blue Path’ was all instrumental but the eponymous follow-up featured some fine vocal performances from Irene Datcher and Dolores Smith on tracks like the jazz funk burner ‘Truth is the Key’ and the joyously uplifting ‘Love it’. The dance floor is well catered for on the album with ‘Charlie’, a solid disco workout and ‘Things Spring’ featuring a soaring soprano from Justo Almario.  Given it’s sublime musicality, the album gained cult status quickly among jazz and funk fusion fans, not least because of the guitar work from James Mason, a member of the Roy Ayers group. Mason would go on to record and release his own solo album in 1977, ‘Rhythm of Life’, that gained similar ‘Holy Grail’ status among jazz funk collectors as the Tarika Blue album. The other featured guitarist on the album is Ryo Kawasaki. Born in Toyko, Japan, in 1943, Kawasaki settled in New York in 1973, soon becoming an in-demand player in the vibrant local jazz scene, playing with Gil Evans, Chico Hamilton, Elvin Jones, Dave Liebman and many others. Kawasaki also had  a successful solo career recording several classic fusion albums including ‘Prism’ and ‘Eight Mile Road’ before taking an excursion into programming computer games in the 1980s.  The name Tarika Blue was back in circulation again around the millennium when producer J Dilla used a sample from the track ‘Dreamflower’ in Erykah Badu’s Grammy nominated ‘Didn't Cha Know’ - without the band’s permission! There was an out of court settlement but it just proved that Tarika Blue’s music still had currency with the most successful and respected artists and producers. And it’s easy to hear why. ‘Dreamflower’, a diaphanous pearl of a track, floats along like a wisp of perfume on the evening air and it’s easy to hear why Dilla zoned in on it to accompany Badu’s sensuous vocal lines. 

Jorja Smith/Ezra Collective - Rose Rouge/Footprints

Legendary labels Decca Records and Blue Note have joined forces for Blue Note Re:imagined; a brand new collection of classic Blue Note tracks brought together for the first time, reworked and newly recorded by a selection of the jazz scene’s most exciting young talents today.

Representing a bridge between the ground-breaking label’s past and future, the project features Brit Award-winning Jorja Smith, whose version of St Germain’s Rose Rouge is featured on the A side of this vinyl

The track, for which St Germain originally sampled Marlena Shaw’s Cookin With Blue Note At Montreaux album, takes its cues from classic soul, jazz and reggae and perfectly captures the enduringly relevant Blue Note aesthetic. Jorja is “Honoured to be involved on this Blue Note album to rework St Germain’s anthem ‘Rose Rouge’. And with such an array of wonderful musicians on the album, including my brothers Ezra Collective”.

Lupe Fiasco/Kaelin Ellis - House

GRAMMY-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco and Orlando producer Kaelin Ellis released their collaborative EP HOUSE via 1st & 15th / Thirty Tigers. The EP came together by chance — on May 5th, Lupe was tagged on Twitter in the replies of a Tweet from Kaelin Ellis, a rising producer who had been posting clips of himself creating beats in lockdown. Reading "Get this to @LupeFiasco somehow,” Lupe listened, liked the beat, screen recorded Kaelin's video, dropped it in GarageBand, freestyled over the beat, exported it in Quicktime, then Tweeted the song just a few hours after he first saw the mention. 

HOUSE, referencing that the two had created the collaborative EP locked down in their respective houses.

For the album art, Lupe and Kaelin were inspired by iconic Columbia Records jazz album covers like Dave Brubeck's Time Out and Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um. The art on HOUSE features a painting of “” painted by Peter Gellatly, the father of Lupe's friend Sky. Peter recently died of COVID-19 — in the album’s liner notes, Sky Gellatly eulogizes his father, and includes a story about how Peter was a Merchant Marine who once sold a boat to the government of Nicaragua, then rode a motorcycle through Central America back to the US, returning with the money he’d use to build Sky’s childhood home.

For the EP’s first track "HOMME MADE,” Lupe had his friend Virgil Abloh speak about the concept of a house — Virgil has a Master of Architecture, and Lupe wanted to present an architect’s perspective. Abloh is also featured on the song “SHOES,” where he describes hypothetically designing the shoes that Ahmaud Arbery was wearing when he was murdered. The song “DINOSAURS” is about how we could be on the brink of another mass extinction, and “SLEDOM” (“models" spelled backwards) is a critique of the modeling industry. The final song “LF95” is the original track Lupe recorded that set this project into motion. 

Atropolis - Time of Sine

Time of Sine represents the positive and negative forces in life, as a producer Atropolis is stuck between acoustic and electronic worlds, the sine wave is what bridges them together for him. One hand, the record is in part a score to this fictional character, Sine, and the journey it goes on. On the other hand, it is related to the up and down motions of this fundamental waveform; each track represents different emotions of these motions. Each feature engages with this movement and reflect upon negative or positive energies that have influenced them. Time of Sine embraces the up's and down's and all the growth influenced by the movements of these forces. Atropolis has spent the past decade teaching music production, releasing music, studying and working with sounds ranging from his own Greek-Cypriot heritage to other diverse musical cultures in Colombia, India, Mexico, Ghana and South Africa. With a degree in music composition and ethnomusicology, Atropolis is Adam’s alter ego that explores international styles of music fused with a diverse range of contemporary electronic genres. Growing up, Adam’s after school jazz program at Queens College greatly influenced his improvisational, compositional, and rhythmic approach to music production. His instructors at Queens College introduced a focused study on Thelonious Monk’s repertoire, which still resonates throughout Adam’s approach to playing his primary instrument, the piano. Parallel to these teenage musical moments, Adam was introduced to composition using Sibelius, and Digital Performer, where Atropolis got his first chops in music production using digital audio workstations.

Maestro at W Lounge Amsterdam

Mood and Food Sessions

Maestro feat. Susanne Alt and Bas van Lier