Broken Beat/Nu Jazz charts

Review: After reuniting the Cosmic Renaissance project, and following up the release of the album Universal Language in 2022, Gianluca Petrella returns with a new five-track EP, 'Universal Message', again on Schema. Recontextualizing the vision of the album, this follow-up extends its impressive jazzdance and hip-house vision, with Petrella ever-revolving his style towards new Afro-jazz-futurist vortices, abandoning the band concept towards an electronic aesthetic with a profound spiritual concept to boot.

Review: Masterminded by Danish stwart Alex Puddu and the Ivisible Session's Luciano Cantone, The Afro Soul Prophecy is a collaborative project featuring contributions from seriously good jazz, soul and Afro-funk musicians from around the World. Of course, sometimes such all-star affairs fail to live up to the hype, but Heat In The City certainly does. Offering a mixture of Roy Ayers' style jazz-funk, Afro-beat, Latin grooves, disco and Blaxpolitation funk instrumentals, Puddu and Cantone have managed to get the most from their contributors while balancing free expression with a detailed, intricate musical script packed to the rafters with superb musical details. For that reason alone, we'd argue that the album is well worth picking up.