Shuggie Otis – Things We Like To Do

As you should all be aware of by now (especially after our interview last week!) Shuggie Otis’ legendary 1974 album Inspiration Information has been re-reissued by Legacy. In contrast to the Luaka Bop issue from the early part of this century, this version includes a wealth of things we’ve never heard before. All told there are a full 17 tracks that have been previously unreleased until this release. As Shuggie mentioned in the interview, a lot of the post-Inspiration music was recorded at his home studio over the years (roughly 1975-2000) in the hopes of having enough material to release another album. It took a long time coming, but I think we’re all thankful it’s finally come out. The most fascinating aspect of this release for me is the unreleased music that was recorded in between Freedom Flight and Inspiration Information. 4 tracks are included here (“Things We Like To Do” above) that were originally recorded to be a part of his next record, but for whatever reason Shuggie decided to go a different way and the rest is history as they say…however thanks to this release we’re now able to hear these tracks and marvel at even more music from early 1970s Shuggie Otis, and what might have been and what still may be.

Jungle Fire – Firewalker

As great as this April has been on the special guest front (and still more to come with Shuggie Otis this week and LA’s King next week!) there have been a few attempts at bringing in bands that simply didn’t work out. One of them was with Jungle Fire, a recently formed Afro-Latin funk outfit from here in Los Angeles. So far the band has released a couple of 45s on Colemine Records, including this one, released on Record Store Day 2013. At first I thought the band was covering Rusty Bryant’s “Fire-eater” but quickly realized that this is an original track (and a totally different fire-related activity), more of a Afro-Disco tip, that showcases some of the interesting directions the band may move towards in the future. Hopefully we’ll be able to bring them into KPFK a little later this year for what I’m sure will be a smoking live set.

Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge – The Sure Shot Parts 1 & 2

{If you’re gonna pick this up on Record Store Day and you’re in LA, make sure to drop Adrian Younge’s store the Artform Studio. TONS of DJs will be doing there thing, in addition to the legendary RZA of the Wu Tang!!!}

We’ve gotten little bits of this album for the past month or two but this collaboration is finally out and it’s a marvel. Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge combine for the most cinematic release of 2013. Conceived as a sort of origin story for Ghostface that finds him rising up through the ranks of an Italian crime family until he splits to build his own reputation. The family strikes back after Ghostface starts a romance with the Don’s daughter and they murder him (perhaps the first case of this) by boiling him alive in vinyl acetate. They then press his remains into records as a souvenir but lo and behold his spirit comes back when the needle drops on the records and his revenge begins. Just unbelievably awesome. I’m not sure I could have dreamed up this project any better than it came out in reality. Guaranteed to be in the top 10 of my faves for the year, might even end up at the top of the list.

From the performances in LA at the Mayan, it was clear they were making this an experience and the theatrics of those performances have found their way into the first full video from this album. I don’t know if they’ll film the entire album from start to finish, but boy do I wish they would, especially after the release of the video for “Rise Of The Ghostface Killah,” vintage Giallo + Ghostface + Several LA people as “extras” = Win!  I have a feeling every Wu-Tang member will want their own origin story after this.

Lady – Tell The Truth

{Lady will be perfoming on Wednesday April 17th at the Troubadour in West Hollywood along with Lee Fields & the Expressions and LA’s very own Jungle Fire. If all goes well, they’ll also be our guests on next week’s Melting Pot on KPFK!}

In a year that already boasts a half-dozen fantastic retro-soul releases, Truth & Soul’s Lady represents the most interesting and unexpected of the bunch. Composed of the duo Nicole Wray and Terri Walker backed by the Truth & Soul house musicians, Lady certainly sounds at home with labelmate Lee Fields and other retro-soulsters such as Sharon Jones, Nicole Willis. What really stands apart is both the fact of having twin lead vocalists and the way these vocalists sing. In many instances retro-styled bands will attempt to fairly accurately recreate the sounds of 1960s & 1970s. Certanly the backing music from the T&S crew hits on some recongizable singposts of sound, particularly from early 1970s Hi Records, but Wray and Walker’s style, phrasing and attitude don’t quite have that same feel. They sound decidedly a part of contemporary R&B style. For some purists that might be an issue, personally I think it’s their greatest strength as it gives the sound of Lady something that many other bands simply don’t have. There’s a certain edge to the sweetness here and a distinctiveness of sound that makes me very excited to hear what will be coming on down the line from these wonderful ladies.

If you don’t get a chance to catch them in action (or need more convincing), you should check out the very slick video for “Get Ready”:

Charles Bradley – Strictly Reserved For You

2013 is shaping up to be a banner year for retro-styled soul sounds. As you’ll see over the next few weeks there have been a number of brand new dynamite soul releases already this year. Charles Bradley’s 2nd album for Dunham/Daptone, Victim Of Love, builds on the debut and adds some new wrinkles into the “Screaming Eagle Of Soul” repetoire. “Stricly Reserved For You” was our first taste of the new record and it remains to my ears the strongest track.

Jason Molina – The Harvest Law

Even though I considered myself a long time fan of Jason Molina’s work, at his passing I was overwhelmed with how much music the man recorded. One of the drawbacks of working at a station that has no working library and no highly organized music department is that you are 100% responsible for tracking down your music. In times where there is a lot going on personally, such as grading which tends to be the thing that takes me far away from my “life” as a DJ, it means that I’m not able to stay up on new releases. At Molina’s passing I was particularly saddened that I hadn’t heard of what would be his final release before death, 2012′s Autumn Bird Songs. The collection wasn’t meant to be a swan song. It was meant to be a compliment to artwork from William Schaff (that’s some of his work on the cover) in a book called From Blacksheep Boys to Bill Collectors. As possibly Molina’s final statement, the EP is a heartbreaker. Hearing the changes in Molina’s voice give you a sense why he felt it was important enough to take a hiatus to work on his health issues. The wounded quality of Molina’s voice gives “The Harvest Law” an even greater weight than it’s cryptic lyrics suggest. There’s a finality present as he counts down “twelve fires,” a process that sounds as if the world is ending, made all the more terrifying through the knowledge that there will be no more from Jason Molina.

Amatorski – Never Told

In a show full of fantastic brand new music last week, I think the biggest revelation was this track from the Belgian group Amatorski. I hadn’t heard anything from the group before, and the first couple of tracks that I heard from this were filled with promise, but didn’t fully grab me. All that changed with “Never Told,” which begins soulful and sparse with piano, drums and bass and continues a nice slow burn when the two vocalists are added. Things open up unexpectedly towards the end as a variety of more post-rock elements enter in giving the whole song a decidely cinematic feel and scope. TBC’s other tracks may be a bit too experimental for this group to find a large audience here in the states, but “Never Told” is easily one of the most marvelous things I’ve heard in 2013, already something I can guarantee will be there at the end of the year when we run down the best music of the year.

Adrian Younge & William Hart – Stand Up

Been sitting on this one for months and months, but finally it has been released! Adrian Younge has been exceptionally busy over the last year, working on three separate records in addition to scoring Cartoon Network’s Black Dynamite. This record is sandwitched in between his own album with his group Venice Dawn and the upcoming collab with Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang. AY and the Delfonics makes a ton of sense stylistically. The Delfonics’ sound, especially in the early period, had a lush, deep and dark quality to it. As such, the distinctive falsetto of William Hart fits perfectly with Adrian’s music. it’s rare that a dream match-up actually sounds exactly how you’d picture it, but here it is…enjoy it to the fullest.

Added bonus, the retro 1990s styled video for the lead single “Stop & Look”:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Higgs Boson Blues

{Just heard that there is a live webcast of the album release show here in Los Angeles, Thursday, Feb. 21st at the Fonda.  You can watch Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in all their sartorial and sonic splendor through RFB’s Youtube Channel at 8:45 West Coast Time}

Any new music from Nick Cave is a thing to be celebrated. The fact that along with his band, the Bad Seeds, the man has arguably never released a bad record is quite an achievement. Perhaps I’m biased. I’ve been a fan since around 1994, when I first truly heard the band’s music on Album 88 and a performance at Lollapalooza that year sealed the deal. Unlike the last album, Dig Lazarus Dig, which clearly was influenced by the Grinderman project and had a bit more of an edge and groove to the music, Push The Sky Away, tones things down considerably, with much darker tones to the music and much more epic sweeps the music. This is not a record to listen to while the song is still up, it’s album built for cruising dark city streets well after midnight, where menace or salvation lurks around every corner.

All of that is on display in the longest track on the album the track that feels like the centerpiece of the album, even though it’s the next to last track, “the Higgs Boson Blues.” The track I think also showcases Cave’s singing more than any other track on the album, (I still dream about Cave releasing an album in a stricter jazz or blues style, but I recognize that’s just his style). Just yesterday I was reading about some of the Higgs Boson discoveries, filled with more than a bit of dread, much of which is hinted at throughout the song. I don’t know what possessed Cave to fit Miley Cyrus into this tale, but he’s probably the only songwriter around that could pull off a Hannah Montana reference + hint at the future suicide of Cyrus, while also musing about Higgs Boson, Robert Johnson & the Devil and the assassination of MLK,  and still have it all strangely make sense. Push The Sky Away is a worthy addition to the long catalog of Nick Cave, sure to be one of my favorites of the year.

Another example of the style and sound of this new record is “Jubilee Street” which has a suitably seedy video, made all the cooler by that classic Nick Cave strut as we walks down the titled street:

Marcos Valle – O Cafona

Garra, the second full-length record from Marcos Valle is a VERY tough record to come by. Thanks to the good folks at Light In The Attic, we all can revel in this bit of post-bossa/post-tropicalia/pre-black rio slice of Brazilian goodness as well as 3 other 1970s records from Valle. Some might be surprised that “O Cafona” is essentially a novela theme song, but if you paid attention when I raved about the soundtrack that features a different version, you know that novelas in Brazil had some seriously good and often exclusive music. Valle’s version here slows things down just a tad, makes the drums a bit punchier and adds some almost proto-rap vocals to make it extra-nice.

Hot 8 Brass Band – New Orleans (After The City)

Currently making preparations like a whole lot of people in the US for watching the Super Bowl on Sunday (which means I won’t be hosting Melting Pot tomorrow, instead I’ll leave you in the VERY capable hands of SeanO from KPFK’s Soundwaves!), which this year is going to be in probably THE place it should always be, New Orleans. With New Orleans on the mind (and with the possibility of interviewing the band very soon, hopefully more on that next week), I’ve been listening to the Hot 8 Brass Band’s album which came out at the tail end of the year. As has been evidenced here, the end of 2012 was kind tough on me, so there’s a lot of music that came out that I haven’t been able to bring out nearly enough on Melting Pot. Hot 8 Brass’s record is certainly one of those. Hot 8 shares the city with other highly talented brass bands, including Rebirth, Soul Rebels and Dirty Dozen. Like those bands, their particular brass band style mixes a bit of that New Orleans second line sound with jazz, R&B and Hip-Hop. Hot 8 puts their own special brand on the style and shows that in a city full of great musicians, the band is worthy of acclaim all their own. Hot 8 Brass has also been a guest on one of my favorite TV shows, and one of the best television shows about music and musicians, Treme. “New Orleans (After The City)” was featured in the show and on the soundtrack and now finds it’s way on this album as well.

One of the great surprises of the album, is the band’s choice to cover the Specials’ “Ghost Town,” recontextualizing it into a post-Katrina anthem for NOLA, as haunting and soulful as the city itself:

Dom La Nena – O Vento

Dominique Pinto is the woman behind Dom La Nena. Born in Brazil, Pinto has spent time moving around France and Argentina and her music has a simultaneously serene and restless quality that might be related to that background. There’s also a very cinematic quality which also makes sense since she’s worked as a cellist for a number of quite fantastic singer/actresses including Jane Birkin and Jeanne Moreau. “O Vento” is the kind of thing I expect to hear early in an Almdovar film before anything really crazy happens and instead Pedro is just allowing us to fall in love with his style and his characters. Quite a debut, and already a record that will likely be on our playlists for months to come.

The Amazing – Flashlight

Despite all my best efforts, it seems there are always some amazing records that slip through the cracks from year to year. In this case, this was literally true, with Swedish outfit The Amazing’s album Gentle Stream. The Amazing have a very familiar sound, courtesy of Reine Fiske and Johan Holmegrad who are both members of one of my favorite contemporary bands Dungen (that duo also turned up in ANOTHER record that I missed from 2012, the more jazz oriented Svenska Kaputt). Needless to say it’s a sound that I’m very much enamored with even though The Amazing have a bit less neo-psych style going on and fall a bit more on the pastoral indie-rock side of things. In addition to missing hearing and playing this record, I’m really kicking myself that I missed them performing here in LA back in November. This video for “Gone” (featuring Moussa Fadera on drums instead of Holmegrad but absolutely no drop off in style or sound) gives a bit of a taste of what was missed and what is still yet to come.

Françoiz Breut – Marie-Lise

It’s no secret that I’m very fond of Françoiz Breut, she was one of my first guests at KPFK, and many of her records are amongst my favorites, particularly 2008′s A l’aveuglette which contains one of my absolute favorites of this first decade of the 21st century, “Les Jeunes Pousses” (clearly she’s such a favorite I can’t stop using the word favorite in order to describe her!). Four years was a long time to wait for new music, but a couple of months ago, she released La Chirurgie Des Sentiments in France. As she’s done on many of her prior records, there’s a slight shift in her sound. Whereas A l’aveuglette felt like an intimate record, produced effortlessly in a midnight session at a friend’s apartment, La Chirurgie Des Sentiment has the sound of an album recorded in a funky and smoky Parisian bar around 4am. Much of this is related to the use of keyboards, often layered around and on top of each other and sampled/found sounds throughout the record. “Marie-Lise” showcases this latest change in sound from Breut, for those having trouble getting a hold of this album in the States, there is a digital link to the album on Françoiz Breut’s bandcamp page. Hopefully we’ll get a US release for the album in 2013. As was the case with her last record, don’t be surprised if this ends up in my “Best Of” lists for this year and next!

Here’s another track, “Bruxelles (BXL) Bleuette,” that also gives a strong sense of the different style Françoiz is using on this album:

Volumes – I’m Gonna Miss You

Sure to be on every DJ’s holiday list, whether they have been naughty or nice, is the 45th release from Chicago’s Numero Group. 2012 has been a somewhat quiet year for Numero, espcially after the stellar past two, but clearly they’ve been hard at work compiling this monster. For their 45th release they’ve put together 45 7″s, all incredibly rare and hard to find soul and funk, the vast majority of which have never been reissued until now. Scariest part of this set is that it’s labeled as “Vol. #1″!?!?!?!??!!!

And yes there’s even a lovingly put together video for the set that’s just going to make you want it even more: