Be With Vinyl & CDs

Review: Be With Records' latest reissue takes us back to the mid 1980s and the wonderfully loved-up world of Surface, a trio founded in the boogie era went on to notch up a string of hot '80s soul hits. The record boasts two of the American outfit's finest moments. On the A-side you'll find 1983 debut single 'Falling In Love', a near perfect fusion of sweet, loved-up vocals, metronomic synth bass and breezy melodic motifs that has long been considered a classic (and with good reason). Arguably more exciting for the heads is the flipside 'Love Mix' of 'Happy', a sparse, stripped-back and 'reconstructed' Loose Ends style slow jam from 1987 with added dub-wise intent and echoing drum machine percussion.

Review: .Lewis Taylor has always roamed fairly creatively freely with his music. He emerged at first releasing psychedelic music in the 80s under the name Sheriff Jack, then as Lewis Taylor in 1996 he offered a self-titled long player debut that explored the neo-soul sound of the day. He put out plenty of albums after that, an even played bass with Gnarls Barkley. Much of his work is being reissued right now including Lewis II which mixes up soul and breaks, funk and beats, with plenty of percussive grooves and expressive vocals that fans of James Lidell will love.

Review: Alan Tew's driving jazz-rock, sleuth-funk masterpiece, Drama Suite Part I, is finally reissued to sate your appetites for arguably the very best library two-parter in existence. If you don't know, get to know. Originally released in 1976 but wonderfully timeless, this one's at the top of every library funk collectors' list. It's easy to see why. Racing out of the gate, the gritty crime funk of 'The Detectives' makes for a thrilling ride. A dramatic action theme, it's packed with strident playing and bags of attitude; and thereafter, we get ten drama-tinged, horn-heavy, wah-wah-laced, conga-enhanced, synth-riddled tracks built for maximum funk fever. 'Helicop' is one such fast paced and energetic dramatic action background, while 'The Big One (Prelude)' brings with it an ace bassline and creeps along superbly, adding tension with an amazing rolling piano loop stopping us dead in our tracks. It's all building to 'The Big One', a driving, dramatic, full-band action with fantastic funk breaks, heavy horns and *that* piano refrain. Notably, the track was sampled by Jay-Z; and you can't really blame him, can you?

Review: British library musician and composer Alan Tew has one of his many magnum opuses, Drama Suite Part II, reissued by KPM. With the label keen to flaunt its first edition's going rate on Discogs, Tew's follow-up to the first part is a holy grail for library music collectors, owing to its performative subtlety, breadth of mood, and doubtless bottling of several modish styles of the time: noir, dark jazz, explotiation theme music. The track 'Stonechange' in particular hears many coded rerubs, with many versions and sub-versions, as was of the factual, rationalistic and methodical approach to the library music of the 1970s and early 80s. It's also got an indelibly clean sound: as with all KPM reissues, the audio for Drama Suite Part II comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis.

Review: Todd Russell and The Dangerous Coats (aka. Scotty Coats and Erick "Todd" Coomes) are destined to impress with their of psychedelic rock and ethereal electronics on their latest single, Playa Larga. Touted as "in very real danger of being lost forever", this is an unearthing of two of their private downtempo-ish recordings, which both come on a double A-side 12" adorned with artwork by Arizona artist Frank Gonzales. Hailing from LA, they wear their hometown on their sleeve here, charting the mood of heat-hazed convertible sweats and brand boulevard cruisings, albeit with a humid rainforested twist.

Review: Slow (Motion And Movement) was originally released on the Sonoton label back in 1980. It is a cult favourite now, much revered for its chipped, cut and edited takes on library breaks. The super sought after record gets a full reissue here from the good folks at Be With and is full of some of the most heat, dubbed out, slow and twisted library breaks you could ever imagine hearing. In between those monstrous moments are plenty of new age and synth style tracks that are all just as good. This most varied and vital selection is an essential one for all serious diggers.

Review: During the early 1980s, German composer Gerhard Trede donned the Victor Cavini alias for a trio of library music albums that have since become confirmed collector's items. Here dusty-fingered diggers Be With Records offer up a new re-mastered edition of the first of these, "Japan". As the title suggests, Trede's compositions are short "pictures" of the Far East nation built around traditional Japanese instrumentation and familiar musical tropes. They're all rather good though, evoking mental images of temples hidden in glades and the incidental music often found on some of the more bizarre martial arts movies of the '70s and '80s. If you dig library music with an exotic twist, they're well worth a listen.

Review: At the time of his passing in 2017, the late, great soul star Leon Ware was working on a new album with long-time collaborator Taylor Graves. Although he never finished it, Be With has decided to put together a final posthumous album that contains the five songs he finished for the set - which, impressively, include cameos from the likes of Kamasi Washington and Thundercat - and six cuts from an obscure, Japan-only CD from 2013. It's a wonderful listen from start to finish, with the Latin-tinged soul-jazz of "For The Rainbow", the head-nodding boogie business of "Sigh" and the synth-laden, strangely swung brilliance of "Are You Ready" amongst the highlights.

Review: Not to be confused with Klaus WeiB, the East Germany-born handball hero of the Summer Olympics 1972, although born in the same era, this Klaus Weiss is in fact the man who started out as a jazz drummer before expanding his remit to other instruments and genres, winding up pretty prolific in the world of movie and TV scores. As can be heard here.

While not directly linked to, taken from, or inspired by screen work, Open Space underscores (ahem) many of the same totems. It's un-rushed, yet tracks are relatively brief, not much more than interludes. Each feels similar to the next, but they clearly invoke very different emotional responses. Somewhere between synth-laden fantasy soundtracks of yore, and medieval court music, it's like going into the future only to realise civilisation has gone backwards while retaining some of its tech prowess.

Review: Less of a whisper and much more of a future bellow; these 1979 disco boogie gems still shine with such an effortless synth class they sound as if they could strut out of a studio almost 40 years later. "Keep On Lovin' Me" is all about that slinky, molten bassline while "Turn Me Out" fixes our focus more on the Californian band's epic harmonies. Another premium excavation from Be With, we'll keep on lovin' this for a long long time to come.

Review: For their latest red-hot reissue, the admirable Be With Records takes us back to Paris in 1979 and the sole album by Who's Who - one of the numerous aliases of songwriter, musician and producer Daniel Bangalter, AKA Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk's dad. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right? The six tracks showcased on the eponymous set are very in keeping with French disco of the period, with attractive (and then cutting edge) synthesiser sounds being combined with glassy-eyed male and female vocals, infectious "walking" basslines and Cerrone-esque drums. Highlights are plentiful, from the peak-time disco joy of the tropical-tinged "Palace Palace", the Moroder/Patrick Cowley-influenced mid-tempo spaciness of 'Hypno Dance', to the Tata Vega style jauntiness of 'Roll kacky Roll' and the fantastic 'Dancin' Machine'.