Schema Italy Vinyl & CDs

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.

Review: Nicola Conte is one of the central figures in the Schema story, and his nu jazz and broken beat partnership with Gianluca Petrella has yielded some golden music in recent years. Nigeria originally came out in 2018, and then last year popped up on the duo's People Need People LP, but now it's getting a proper remix treatment which sees Tall Black Guy twisting the track out as a heady disco house roller for sundown moments when you need a little jazzy flair in the proceedings. That version comes in vocal and instrumental versions, and then the mighty Andres steps up for one of his simmering groove escapades as he delivers an extended remix of 'African Spirits'.

Review: Something of an all-star affair here, as Sacred Rhythm main man Joaquin "Joe" Clausell sprinkles some of his remix magic over 'Inner Light', one of the standout cuts from Nicola Conte and Gianluca Petrella's 2021 album People Need People. Whereas the original was a richly percussive, dubbed-out future jazz-goes-dub house affair, Clausell's versions are warmer, looser, jazzier and deeper. Check first the A-side 'Cosmic Arts Version', where Rasahan Ahmad's poetic spoken word vocal rises above broken beats, layered jazz horns, warm bass, glistening guitar kicks and warming electric piano keys. The flipside 'Cosmic Arts Version' is, if anything, even better, delivering dubbed-out percussion, mazy trumpet solos and trippy effects aplenty. In a word: essential!

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: One of Italy's most famous and influential experimental troupes, Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza took life in the mid 60s with a mesmerizing fusion of musique concrete, jazz and surrealism. This debut album celebrates its 50th birthday this year but it still sounds centuries ahead of its time. The dramatic, gravity-forced groans and creaks of "String Quartet", the clipped restrained mania of "Quartetto", the absolute sci-fi of "RKBA 1675/1", it's not hard to understand how or why Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza had a huge impact on scores and contemporary classical. Immense, perplexing and out of this world.

Review: Stefano Tirone is one of Schema Records's main men and here he remixes his own last album Moby and Soul. He reworks it into a more dance floor friendly disco sound with bright nu-disco melodies and slinky drums. It is an homage to the original sounds of the 70s and 80s and American DJ Larry Levan and Italian Baldelli. Opener 'Body & Soul' kicks off with nice fresh and upbeat vibes and then there are summery Balearic sounds like the gorgeous 'Flying Away' and the groovy 'In The Name Of Love' (feat Laura Fedele - extended remix). 'No Meio Do Samba' then sinks into hip swinging house territory.

Review: Stefano Tirone's career as S-Tone Inc stretches right back to the dawn of the 1990. Back then, he was joining the dots between deep house and acid jazz, but over the decades since he's settled in to a groove rooted in nu-jazz and soul. On this seven-inch, he revisits two tracks from his fine 2020 album Body & Soul. First, he re-imagines 'Move On', featuring vocalist Afra Kane, as a sumptuous chunk of disco-influenced dancefloor soul - all Chic style bass and guitars, hazy horns, lilting synth-strings and crunchy Clavinets - before reframing the Toco-voiced Latin number 'Rosa De Rebeira' as a warming chunk of samba-house loveliness.