Schema Italy Vinyl & CDs

Review: Earlier this year, we were treated to two top-notch Joaquin 'Joe' Claussell remixes of 'Inner Light', one of the standout cuts from Nicola Conte and Gianluca Petrella's fantastic collaborative album People Need People. Here we're treated to two more fresh takes on cuts from that essential LP. On side A, DJ Spinna gives his 'galactic soul' take on 'New World Shuffle', re-imagining the track as a languid but floor-friendly fusion of cosmic soul, neo-boogie, deep house and contemporary jazz-funk electronics. Equally as impressive is former Ron Trent protege Anthony Nicholson's remix of 'Inner Light', where twinkling jazz pianos, spacey synth sounds, evocative synth-strings and Raashan Ahmad's fine spoken word vocals rise above a sumptuous and luxurious deep house groove.

Review: Five years on from their debut collaborative EP 'Frisina Meets Toco', modern Brasilian dance artists Gerardo Frisina and Toco return for a second faceoff, this time with liaising artist Luzia Dvorek serving as ringmaster. Centring on samba-infused jazz and deep house with mystical and folk influences, "deixa passar" translates from Portuguese to "let it pass", though the mood is certainly not outright passive. This delectably quartered slice of carnivalesque dance music is rather rich in sonic papaya juice, charting sustained vocal contrasts between Toco and Luzia against smoky and furnaced beats. Aperient track 'Deixa Passar' leans heaviest on languid piano, whilst dozier mists emerge on the B-side in the form of 'Ile' and its rework by Gerardo Frisina, bringing pan flutes, strings, breathy vocal counterpoints, cabasa shaker, and subtle bass undercurrents.

Review: Nicola Conte and Nico Lahs, both Bari-born producers pushing the boundaries of underground Afro-Latin and jazzdance, hear the warmest of intros through their friends over at Schema Italy, their sound pivoting a careful Newtonian balance between presence and nostalgia. The roomy but distant highs of 'Macumba De Oxala' contrast strongly yet subtly to the hifi plinks and percs of 'La Danse De L'Esprit', on the latter of which we hear visiting production fellow Oaklandian Lalin St Juste add an ancestral vocal magic. This first EP is only a start, with a second 12" and a resultant double LP planned.