S TONE INC Vinyl & CDs

Review: With a career stretching back to the turn of the '90s, Stefano 'S-Tone' Sirone has long been one of Italy's foremost purveyors of jazz-fired goodness. Last year he returned to action with "Onda", a brilliant set of jazz-funk, disco, samba and deep house fusion that also marked his first album-length excursion for four years. This nifty seven-inch offers up two new interpretations of one of that collection's standout tracks, "Luz Da Joaca", by fellow Italian nu-jazz veteran Gerardo Frisina. On the A-side, he turns it into a Clavinet-sporting chunk of samba-house fusion rich in layered percussion and '70s style Brazilian jazz-funk vocals. The flipside dub, an altogether heavier and more percussively intense affair, is arguably even better.