Juno Recommends Brokenbeat / Nu Jazz May 2019

Review: "This Is What You Are" is undoubtedly Mario Biondi's most celebrated work. He first sung it for original composers Was A Bee in 2004, before re-recording it for his debut album (alongside the High Five Quintet) in 2006. Since then it has been reissued or remixed on numerous occasions. Here it gets reissued on a tidy 7" single, with a punchy radio edit - a swinging, Sunday afternoon style chunk of Latin soul-jazz rich in jaunty grooves, soaring orchestration and smooth vocals - being joined by the "Brazilian Rime" rework. This tasty re-recording re-casts the song as a breezy, samba-fired slab of early 1970s style Brazilian MPB. It's an inspired interpretation and could well become the definitive version of the track.

Review: This tasty release is the first instalment of BBE and Soul Clap member Eli "Bamboozle" Goldstein's "House On 45" series. The basic idea is to offer up rare and hard to find house cuts that have only ever been released on seven-inch singles. To kick things off, Goldstein has selected Derrick Carter's 2017 "DC Nu Vox Dub" of his 2002 classic "Squaredancing In A Roundhouse", an insatiable version of a killer cut rich in bluesy samples, bumpin' beats and scat vocals. Equally as impressive is George Alexander and Big John Whitfield's 2009 cover of Joe Smooth classic "Promised Land", a warm and musically expansive affair that adds superb new flute and electric piano parts to one of house music's most celebrated songs.

Review: 18 year-old Marvin Jupiter son of Phil Asher makes his bow on 2000 Black, serving up a track that effortlessly joins the dots between the bass-heavy weight of trap, indigenous South African rhythms, bustling West London broken beat and the synth-fired jazz-funk goodness of Herbie Hancock. The fact that such a young debutant is able to distill these influences into a brilliant, futurist house cut is, quite frankly, incredible. Dego and Lord's flipside revision is equally as tasty, too. Drawing on the track's bruk and jazz-funk inspirations while adding funky new Clavinet and guitar motifs, the West London stalwarts serve up a loose and groovy peak-time interpretation that should excite all those who like their beats broken and their basslines chunky.

Review: This long promised debut album from Pete Cunningham's hybrid electronic/acoustic jazz collective, Ishmael Ensemble, has already received rave reviews. Listening back, it's easy to see why. The collective specializes in inventive, slow-burn epics that fuse the producer's dance music influences with more traditional jazz and seductive songs that recall the folksy bliss of the Minnie Riperton fronted Rotary Connection. They're capable of laying down bona-fide floor-rockers - see "Siren!" and the sweaty, bass-heavy swirl of "Lapwing" - but it's often the more considered and atmospheric pieces ("The Chapel", "Yellow House (feat Yama Warashi)" and the trumpet-driven brilliance of "The River") that leave the longest lasting impression. Either way, it's a superb debut album that's well worth a listen.

Review: Blacks & Blues is a new name to 2000 Black, but the people behind the project are label stalwarts: Dego, Kaidi Tatham, Matt Lord (AKA Lordamercy) and vocalist Obenewa Aboah. With such talent on show, it's unsurprising that opener "Spin" - a cracking slab of broken-beat/soul fusion rich in military style drums, jazz-funk keys and summery vocals - is rather good. While dancefloor-friendly, the track feels loose, languid and tailor-made for outdoor parties. "Don't Know Why (Chant For Love)" is an even more lo-fi broken soul excursion (very Fatima), while "You Know The Feeling" recalls the jazz-funk-fired soulful club cuts of early 2000s broken beat heroes Bugz In The Attic.

Review: Before finding fame as part of the extended Rhythm Section International family, Peckham beat-maker Al Dobson Jr. caught listeners' attention via the IZWID released "Sounds From The Village Volume One". Five years on, he's finally produced a sequel. Like its' predecessor, "Volume 2" contains a dizzying number of short-but-sweet workouts that mix-and-match elements of blazed instrumental hip-hop, tropical drum music, bass-heavy electronica, jaunty jazz-funk, dusty jazz, dub riddims, spaced-out soundscapes and almost Balearic musical positivity. With short tracks coming and going at a furious pace, it's sometimes hard to keep up with Dobson's imagination let alone what's coming out of the speakers. That, though, is undeniably a good thing, because "Sounds From The Village Volume 2" sparkles from start to finish.

Review: This debut album from Jo'burg via Doncaster's Skinny Pelembe comes with a weight of expectation. The distinctive soul maverick has been turning heads with his output on Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Recordings for the past two years, and now he's come good on the promise of those singles and EPs with a wonderful, many-sided LP that oozes personality, depth, and a dusty, hand-wrought musicality that hits on an instinctive level. There are flurries of broken beats, low slung wood-carved percussion, rugged neo soul and weather-beaten funk aplenty, with the lines between organic and electronic beautifully blurred. This album deserves to be huge, positioning Pelembe as a vital new talent in the vanguard of UK soul music.