The Best Of Perception & Today Records CD

With a collection that takes in everything from jazz, hip-hop, soul, funk and boogie to house, garage and broken beat, DJ Spinna is in an ideal position to assess the work of Perception and Today Records, two of New York's more interesting underground labels of the last 50 years. Here he picks out two discs' worth of highlights from the imprints' combined catalogues, presenting a fuzzy mix of blistering funk (see Debbie Taylor's "Too Sad To Tell"), quirky jazz (Dizzy Gillespie), heavy soul (Madhouse), Latin flavours (Astrid Gilberto), string-laden sweetness (Black Ivory) and piano-laden sunniness (Tyrone Washington).