TURNTABLE LAB

Andy Votel
Twisted Nerve 10th Anniversary CD

master psych digger mixes the Twisted Nerve catalog

Hi-speed mutant mixtape from B-Musicologist Andy Votel using tracks exclusively selected from the vaults his own ferociously independent non-record label. A 40 track masala of T.N. (Twisted Nerve) D.I.Y classics, b-sides, rarities and remixes celebrating a decade of teenage garage jams, Mancunian psychsploitation, arkhestral communism and workshop pop. Twisted Nerve Mixed features tracks from Voice Of the Seven Woods, Samandtheplants the first ever release by BADLY DRAWN BOY rare remixes from CHERRYSTONES and Homelife and psyched-out side projects from Jane Weaver (Misty Dixon), Clearspot (Duophonic), Graham Massey (808 STATE) and CD debuts of vinyl only cuts from label stalwarts Sirconical, Dakota Oak and many more lubricated in custom- built sound effects and dialogue - Twisted Nerve's roster has never been so digestible! About 80 minutes of continues "out-there" music.
reviewed by label review


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Brazilian Beat
Baile Funk, Vol.2 CD

They've done it again! Greg Caz and Sean Marquand, resident selectors at the great Brazilian Beat party and two of NYC's top spinners of South America's sexiest soul, have put together the long anticipated sequel to their necessary Baile Funk mix. There's no weak spots in this collection of searing hot Brazilian funk, and in fact, if you get the impression that these guys could go on for days with this heat, you're probably right. The mix presents a feast of hooks, beats, grooves and melodies, as well as a collector's attention to obscure b-sides and forgotten album tracks (detailed in the informative liner notes). Picking highlights is as simple as hitting the "random" button on your CD player, but I'll try to narrow things down to a couple of my favorites. Os Incriveis get things popping right from the jump with their wicked dedication to Herbie the Love Bug(1), a cut that demonstrates the fun and funky elements that remain constant throughout (and really, how could you go wrong when the Love Bug's involved?). A few minutes later the boys turn up an unusual groover from legend Claudette Soares before moving on to "A Festa(2)" by Silvio Cesar, a slinky, mesmerizing cut. Breakbeat heads will not be disappointed either. Drum master Chico Batera has you covered with "Oxossi(3);" or perhaps the Boogaloo Combo(4) is more your style. The One Way/Al Hudson-esque jam "To Parado Na Tua" and Jorge & Olivetti's "Aleluia(5)," which could be a Rodney Franklin outtake, showcase a slick '80s West Coast funk feel that rounds out the summertime vibe of the set. I'm running out of room, and I haven't even mentioned the devastating Tim Maia jam(6), Wilson Simonal's amazing Bacharach cover, or the ridiculously rare Jorge Ben and Azymuth cuts. This is a mix that anyone could enjoy, and an absolutely essential chapter for fans of Brazilian funk.
reviewed by monk

file under:
reviewer recommended / reviewer reccomended / dance - lab recommended

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Diplo & Tripledouble
AEIOU 2 CD

Money Studies kicks off its new "Lost Masters" reissue series by resurrecting this impossible to find mix from Diplo and fellow Philly record hoarder Tony Tripledouble. Originally self-released on CDR in an edition of less than 500 (plus a few handmade cassettes), AEIOU 2 is over an hour of the finest and rarest breaks drawn from Diplo & Tripledouble's extensive collections of psych, funk and obscure soundtracks. Some of the breaks in this mix have gone on to achieve classic status - still no tracklist to help you out, but now it comes in a full-color digipak designed by PH. And if you ever wanted to hear Diplo skratching, right here's the spot. Recommended.
reviewed by Chris Lemon-Red

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reviewer recommended / reviewer reccomended / dance - lab recommended

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DJ Soulscape
More Sound Of Seoul (Korean Funk) CD

recommended mix of rare korean rock, soul, jazz

Incredible, never thought I'd see a volume two, but Soulscape just had someone hand-deliver these from Seoul! The first volume of this Korean diggers' series sold out very quickly, and with good reason, you're not going to find this stuff anywhere else (still have my Peter Luger porterhouse bet open). Soulscape gives us a little background: "The Postwar Korean Peninsula was a melting pot where different cultures from the east and west collide. The music business grew significantly as clubs were founded around the US military bases and musicians playing for the clubs had interpreted and localized rock, jazz, soul, and boogaloo in various styles. However, such unique music was suppressed and vanished for the political interests of the military regime in the mid 70s an it still remains discontinued and underestimated." DEEP! Essential for Koreans and record heads. 40 tracks mixed, one hour, recommended.
reviewed by the mgmnt

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reviewer recommended / reviewer reccomended / dance - lab recommended

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Mulatu Astatke
New York-Addis-London: The Story Of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975 CD

recommended vintage african jazz

Vibraphone and keyboard player, master arranger and bandleader, Mulatu Astatke is one of the all-time greats of Ethiopian music and the creator of his own original music form, Ethio jazz. Through the acclaimed Ethiopiques album series and through featuring on the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, his music has belatedly reached a global audience and a new, younger generation of fans. In November of last year, he recorded an inspired new album with London psych jazz band The Heliocentrics for Strut's "Inspiration Information" studio collaboration series. Now, Strut are proud to present, for the first time anywhere, the definitive Mulatu career retrospective covering his landmark '60s and '70s recordings. Mulatu is a true pioneer of African music. He was the first Ethiopian musician of his generation to travel extensively and to record abroad - he studied in the UK in Wales and at Trinity College Of Music in London, cutting his teeth on the buoyant London jazz scene of the early '60s. He became the first African student to attend Harvard and he lived and recorded in New York, developing a unique sound that fused Western jazz with traditional Ethiopian melodies. As Mulatu says, "it took a long time to get the balance, to let the colours and the feelings of the Ethiopian modes shine through." Returning to "Swinging Addis" during the late '60s, he became a pivotal figure, arranging for many of the country's top vocalists and developing rich, dense textures in his own music during the final years of Selassie's reign and the mid-'70s rule of the Derg Communist military junta. Tracing the progression of his Ethio jazz experiments with full access to all of the labels for whom he recorded, Mulatu Astatke: New York-Addis-London is the essential Mulatu. Covering his first recordings in the UK during 1965, his groundbreaking fusions for the small Worthy label in New York and his key '70s recordings back in Addis on Amha, Phillips and Axum, the album features comprehensive sleeve notes by Miles Cleret, boss of the excellent Soundway Records imprint, and rare, previously unseen photos from Mulatu's personal archive.
reviewed by label review

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reviewer recommended / reviewer reccomended / dance - lab recommended

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V/A
Do It Yourself: The Rise In The Independent Music Industry After Punk CD

English post-punk compiled

Do It Yourself charts the rise of the independent music industry after punk - from the hundreds of bands and tiny labels that sprung up with like-minded ideals, to the network of shops, manufacturers, studios, printers etc, all connected via a loose network of record distributors that would help define independent music over the following thirty years. Beginning with The Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP released in early 1977, on the newly formed New Hormones label, in Manchester, it soon seemed that every town in Britain had its own music scene complete with bands, small labels, record shops and studios. Directly influenced by the ideals of Punk - self-determination, freedom of expression, etc. - as much as the music meant that these bands were interested in alternatives to the status-quo in managing their careers. This meant finding new ways of getting their music heard outside of the mainstream music industry. It also meant new ways of making music away from the traditional guitar, bass, drums and vocals line-up of rock bands. The reasons for these two factors would be sometimes practical (they couldn't get signed/they couldn't play) and sometimes ideological. Pivotal to the development of the scene was the Rough Trade Records shop run by music fan Geoff Travis. Geoff Travis: "The first records I remember bands bringing into the shop were The Buzzcocks' "Spiral Scratch," Scritti Politti's "Skank Bloc Bologna" and The Desperate Bicycles." Rough Trade Records had started as a second-hand record shop. In 1977 customers began to bring their own newly pressed-up records into the shop, Travis soon began distributing the records to a handful of like-minded shops throughout the country. This developed into a network and bands soon found they could sell 1000s of their own records with no marketing, management, agents etc. At first the records were all coming from people bringing in music to Rough Trade in London, but soon new bands would turn up at their local store with their locally-pressed record and this led to the emergence of a music scene in each town. All the bands on this record released their music independently, either themselves or on a small label. Some went on to be incredibly famous and others didn't. This record celebrates all factions and discusses the social and economic conditions that allowed independent music to thrive in the years to follow up to the present day.
reviewed by label review


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V/A
Forge Your Own Chains: Heavy Psychedelic Ballads And Dirges 1968-1974 CD

heavy psyche comp by Egon and Stones Throw crew

This is as close as record digging gets to "grown and sexy." Now Again strikes again with a 15 track compilation of heavy psyche compiled by label head Egon. There's been numerous bootleg psyche comps that have trickled to collectors over the years, but this official compilation wipes the slate clean and allows even the newbie to get deep into this nerdus genre. Here's what the label has to say:

"Those of us birthed into record collecting by the Hip Hop midwife revered Jimi Hendrix as well as James Brown. We searched for albums by Mulatu Astatke and Power of Zeus with the same fervor," Egon writes in his introduction to the comp. Forge Your Own Chains showcases music from all corners of the world: Colombia, Nigeria, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand and Iran. The focus is on melody, driving rhythms and accessibility. Not one song is included on this compilation because it is from a "rare" album. Certainly, many of these songs do spring from albums that exchange hands for many thousands of dollars and many of these songs have never seen reissue. But these songs are all beautiful in their own right and work to form a coherent album. Psychedelic records, long the mainstay of older, grizzled collectors and seemingly quaint, are, in the hands of Egon and those of his generation, giving up new ghosts.

15 tracks in all, includes a 40 page detail booklet. Recommended.
reviewed by the mgmnt

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reviewer recommended / reviewer reccomended / dance - lab recommended

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V/A
Message From The Tribe: An Anthology of Tribe Records 1972-1976 CD

spiritual jazz from legendary Detroit label collected

Essential compilation of spiritual jazz tracks from the Tribe Record label. Tribe Records came out of the wasteland that was early 70's Detroit. The city was once home to Motown and the country's largest auto manufacturing center, but come 1970, the city was in "a cultural and industrial void." Out of the ashes came Tribe, a label formed by the creative black jazz players left in the city, that proudly released records for 5 years under the m.o. "Music is the healing force of the Universe." This album contains a history of the label from 1972 - 76 through incredible tracks from such notable and influential artists such as Phil Ranelin(1,2), Doug Hammond(3,4), Marcus Belgrave(5), Wendell Harrison(6), and the TRIBE collective(7, 8, 9). This deluxe CD version also includes an incredible 60 page booklet containing liner notes on the label, as well as articles and features from the Tribe magazine which circulated at the time in Detroit (graphic design heads will want to check the vintage styles in there too) and a handful of Tribe postcards. 12 tracks total. Recommended.
reviewed by snackmaster

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reviewer recommended / reviewer reccomended / dance - lab recommended

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V/A
Psych-Funk 101: A Global Psychedelic Funk Curriculum 1968-1975 CD

pick, supreme collection of psyche-funk from all around the world

This is a record collector's wet dream. Here's 14 impossibly rare psyche-funk gems from around the world with many unexpected sources like Istanbul, Seoul, Rome, Beirut, Cairo, Moscow, etc. The musical quality and beat sensibilities (drum breaks galore) are ridiculously high here, every track is a revelation (that Korean joint is my shit!). In addition, the in-depth linear notes, complete with original cover shots, reads like an issue of Wax Poetics. Highly recommended.
reviewed by the mgmnt

file under:
funk soul disco - reviewer recommended / stones throw shop / now again + soul cal (stones throw) / reviewer recommended / and more

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Years
Vosotros Presents: The Years CD

vintage soul and jazzy downtempo

This debut by the The Years, aka Sam Barsch (and a motley crew of guests), is chock full of jazzy downtempo and neo-soul goodness. This one's been getting tons of hype, and we somehow managed to get our paws on the last few copies of this super-limited release (only 173 copies of the CD exist!). The tracks span from warm vintage-sounding soul like "Let's Stay In Love(1)," "Lose My Number(2)," and "Heartbreaker(3)," to funky instrumental cuts like "In THE Crowd(4)," and the awesome 80s sitcom sound on "Them From 'Best Buds'(5)." The CD comes packaged in a hand-numbered, folding paper case, and includes 13 tracks total. I'll remind you again, that there are only a handfull of copies out there and once we sell this batch they're gone forever, so act snappy. Recommended.
reviewed by Hires

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reviewer recommended / reviewer reccomended / dance - lab recommended

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