Terrific, gospelised, soulful disco by Gwendolyn Dennison, produced for P&P by Arthur Manning and P. J. Wyatt, making a change from Greg Carmichael or Patrick Adams.
Theo and Floating Points both rinse it.

Outstandingly soulful Barry White productions from 1974, with fine songs by Tom Brock, and Gene Page pon spot.
(A Case Of) Too Much Lovemaking… What Am I Gonna Do… Biff… Boof.

LP fresh in.

Fifty-six fearless forays deep into the consecrated crates.
ALC does what he does best, with Roc Marciano rocking the pulpit; Budgie wheels back to the UK scene, dazzlingly rallying Knucks, Novelist, JayaHadADream, Joe James, Ragz Originale, Natanya, Qendresa, and full crew.
The CDs are resplendently dressed like a Bible, with foil debossing, the full monty. Lovely stuff.

Lovely, rootsy, melancholic, multifarious music from Angola. Check the sublime, chugging proto-house of Kazum-zum-zum, to start, with its twist of Afrobeat; then the hypnotic Fourth World marimba of Kizomba Kya Kisanji; then the expressive soul of Dembita, flowering out of Baden Powell… Warmly recommended.

Transportingly sublime, dazzlingly virtuosic Carnatic chanting in Sanskrit about female divinity, accompanied by mridangam drums, bells and tambura drone. Beautifully recorded, in Chennai. The chorus singing is the coup de grace.
Ravishing, restorative music; hotly recommended.

Over three hundred pages: numerous previously-unpublished photographs of Sun Ra and the Arkestra by Hartmut Geerken and Val Wilmer; a fully revised discography by Chris Trent, co-author of The Earthly Recordings Of Sun Ra; articles by Amiri Baraka, Chris Cutler, Robert L. Campbell, Salah Ragab and others; and newly gathered, full-colour images of hundreds of Sun Ra album covers, posters, handbills and ephemera, including reproductions of rare, hand-drawn, hand-coloured LP sleeves.
French fold cover, metallic foil blocking on cloth, hardback; 290mm x 245mm.
Fab. Pricey, but it’s a must, let’s face it (and Amazon has the previous, inferior edition for a grand).

‘Previously unreleased recordings made over several nights of the Wailers’ West London residency in June 1976, during their Rastaman Vibration tour. Highlights include a transcendent version of Roots, Rock, Reggae, a rarely-performed Bend Down Low, an extended version of Crazy Baldhead, and a thirty-minute encore that incorporates a twelve-minute Get Up, Stand Up.’

A perfect nugget of vintage digi. Chambers’ expert sing-jaying snags your attention — an inner city blues, with premonitions of ICE — over a tight, buoyant rhythm. Paired with its tough dub, for the first time.

Dead moody Lovers. A worrisomely loose, rumbling, mid-eighties Channel One rhythm, seamed with a squashed steel-drum sample, unfurled like spells.
‘Everything will be alright,’ sings Hopeton about his prospective date, but it doesn’t sound like it.

Gorgeous roots. Seemingly sardonic and above-it-all but utterly trenchant. All the singing is sublime, including the back-up. The gentle nyabinghi percussion and keyboard stabs are beautifully restrained, as Sylvan Morris brings his genius to the mix. Same dub as the original 45. A stone classic. We could listen for days.
Plus the 12 Tribes launch a two-headed-shark attack on the flip, featuring maestro Pablove Black. No less than an instrumental cut to George Beaufort’s insurgent Reaching Our Goal, and a sick synth excursion on the revered Black Star Liner rhythm.

Keith cut some sides for JA producers in the early ‘70s, before moving to New York. In the first half of the ‘80s, his Lovebird label released mostly his own productions, like Honey Bee Fantasy… slow-burning, mid-eighties boogie, nervy with a delicious outsider wrongness. None other than Charles Earland plays keys; Canadian singer Ann Marie handles backing vocals.
AM bounces back on the PM, fronting the first incarnation of the Roots Radics, including Blacka and Bingy Bunny from the Morwells. Sweetly fragile, tentative singing over a dreadnought rhythm.
Painstakingly sleeved as per the original.

Class-conscious, early-eighties Diamonds from the same little red book as Bodyguard. Determinedly defiant, with an edge of menace. Tight, textbook Gussie’s; your-time’s-up horns; masterful, stripped and detailed dub. Ace.

A four-tracker nodding to the Revolutionaries’ late-seventies instrumental EPs out of Maxfield Avenue.
A double whammy of knockout dubs.
First, a head-turning brace for all darker-than-blue massive. A down-to-the-bone version of Pam Hall’s haunted Lovers take on The Stylistics’ Children of the Night; and the startling dub of Junior Moore’s lovely cover of The Isley Brothers’ Voyage to Atlantis. In both the scraps of singing are deadly.
Then two evilous dubs of classic Hopeton Lewis roots, saturated in classic Channel One hard-grooving intensity. Like the opener, never released before now.