DJS: MOST CHARTED - FUNK - MOST CHARTED IN SEPTEMBER 2016

Review: Originally out on the Practice What You Preach album from 1993, "The Plan" by German funkateers Poets of Rhythm has never been pressed up as a single, but has always remained much sought-after by the funk heads, and why wouldn't it be? It's got it all: a James Brown kind of sleaziness backed by a jump-up groove and a sliding set of organs. Wallace Brothers feature on the flip, with the rare funk blazer by the name of "What Cha Feel Is What Cha Get", a rare floor-dominator now available for your turntable. Records are your friends, Mukatsuku leads the way! As played by Mr Thing,Snowboy,Dean Rudland,Smoov etc

Review: London/Berlin 45" crew fatten us up once again with a deeply detailed homage to the mighty A Tribe Called Quest: Sharp takes the lead with a supreme blend of "Find A Way" and a Bebel Gilberto cut that Dilla acquainted many of us with. Flip for Naughty NMX hug the EU tearfully and reverse engineer "Check The Rhime" by bringing us back to the delicious Minnie Ripperton source material. This quest is over.

Review: Two Gilles Peterson classics on one 7 inch !! As per usual, the unstoppable Mukatsuku delivers the undeliverable, and somehow the label boss Nik Weston has managed to license a pair of sought after tunes to find on the second-hand market. It's the second instalment of the Club Jazz series with this 45 a Hungary vs France sound clash.Hungary easily wins this one thanks to the sublime rhythm that is "Bamba" by Dimenzio, an inimitable jazz-dance leviathan that manages to mash-up all the right elements of jazz together with something a little weirder and electronic - a truly supreme piece of music that is recommended to ANYONE. Marius Culter's "Diamant" is a high calibre jazz funk missile, and works beautifully as a stand-alone, but its somewhat swamped by the sheer quality of its counterpart. Recommended. As played by Dean Rudland, Mr Thing, Ashely Beedle, Faze Action,Red Greg,Scrimshire,Frank Booker,Nancy Noise and Pete from On The Corner Records etc

Review: Veteran soul man Lee Fields has been touring and releasing music almost constantly since the late 1960s. In recent years, he's struck up a great partnership with the Truth & Soul label's house band, The Expressions. Their latest collaborative single, "Special Night", is something of a cinematic soul treat, with Fields wringing every bit of emotion out of his cracking, heartfelt vocal. The sumptuous A-side (subtitled 'Part 1') is joined on the flip by a sparser, stripped back version ('Part 2') that somehow manages to further emphasize the brilliance of Fields' lyrics and vocal. Both versions feel like future end-of-night classics.

Review: Back in 2012, Rush Hour boss Antal Heitlager put together a sublime collection of obscure Surinamese disco and boogie for sister label Kindred Spirits. Four years on, and with assistance from Thomas Gesthuizen, he presents the follow-up, Surinam Funk Force. Predictably, it's another fine set full of surprise gems and barely-known classics. While some tracks sound authentically American (see the deep and harmonious brilliance of Steve Watson's "Born To Boogie", and Surinam scene stalwart Sumy's eccentric, synth-laden "The Funky 'G' (Only Comes At Night)", some of the most potent cuts lean more heavily on traditional Surinamese music. In this camp you'll find the thrilling funk of Explosion's "Wakka Mang", and the off-kilter tropical disco-funk of Ronald Snijders' "Kaseko Attack".

Review: Still scorching from the heat of their debut album 55, Hamburg's mysterious steel pan handlers return with a dope little 45 that features one of the excellent covers from their album plus an exclusive that we guarantee will drive your next floor crazy... Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio" takes the lead with its instantly distinctive break and pace. Flip for Sugarhill's "8th Wonder" that's riddled with confidently swung drums, smoky trumpets and a groove so funky you might just have to drop it twice. Give the drummer some.

Review: 45 years and 30-odd albums deep and still cooking up incredible, exciting fusions Brazilian jazz troupe Azymuth are set to update their near-unparalleled repertoire with a new album later this year. In the meantime they're keeping us warm with their sixth album, 1980's Outubro. In places you can really hear big synthetic influences instantly, like the heavy Yamaha riff on full-powered opener "Papasong". In others it's more subtle and aged (thanks to Daft Punk) with class, like the sexy robo-voxed sleazy funk strutter "Dear Limmertz". Elsewhere you can hear the band at their percussive prime ("Carta Pro Airto") and at their damn right sexiest ("Outubro")... And get all excited for their new material.

Review: Another week, another masterful 7" reissue from the unstoppable Athens Of The North. Moreover, it's another sublime find from the label, and it sticks closer to their usual trick of finding one-off soul singles from much coveted artists of the '70s and '80s. Felony Theft only released this one single back in 1972, "When You Have Love", but you can understand why AOTN would want to resurface its dusty percussion for the modern audience; it's one of those rare tunes that sounds like nothing else from the genre, a quirky piece of magic for the diggers. "Run For Cover" is fun, upbeat but less alluring than its A-side sibling, but that is not to say that it isn't also a fine slice of soul-funk mastery. Go.

Review: After releases on Goodgroove and Riddim Fruit, The Allergies, aka Bristol nu-funk duo DJ Moneyshot and Rackabeat, found a welcome home in Jalapeno for their debut album, As We Do Our Thing, which was released earlier this year. Vinyl fans sore at the lack of the album in their preferred format will find consolation in the fact two gleaming highlights now feature on this 45 for Jalapeno. Up top, the smart soul sampling and tight breakbeat patterns of "Love's Supposed To Be" represent all that is good about the party-starting style of The Allergies, whilst "As We Do Our Thing" is a more midtempo horn funker.

Review: Magdy El Hossainy is a bit of a legend, a relic from the glory days of North African music, when all sorts of cutting-edge rhythms were being dreamt up in small, DIY studios. He is a member of the '70s outfit Abdel Halim Hafez, putting out a string of glorious material on Moriphon before separating due to his partner's passing. He's back in 2016, and the keyboardist still passes with flying colours - "Music De Carnival" is a heads-down, murky percussive tune with Hossainy's sparkling synth keys, and a swelling bit bass for its bottom-end. The Steven J re-drum remix, as the name implies, twists the drums into even more dangerous folds and comes out a total winner - a seriously destructive tune for all sorts of DJ's to alleviate over. Recommended.

Review: Periplo marks the solo debut of Early Sounds Recordings co-founder Pellegrino S. Snichelotto, following occasional contributions to other material from the label's extended family of artists. Interestingly, the six-track set shares some stylistic similarities with friends' Nu Guinea's Tony Allen Experiments mini-album, chiefly the producer's delay and reverb-laden fusion of live instruments and vintage analogue hardware. Stylistically, most of the tracks sit somewhere between jazz-funk, cosmic funk, and the kind of melodious Afro-Cosmic fare that was once a staple of Northern Italy's eccentric club scene. There's plenty of hazy musical humidity to enoy, too, with the impeccable "Ad Libitum" standing out.

Review: Well, what a way to inaugurate your label! The newly crowned Spacetalk comes through resolutely correct with this reissue of 1978's "To See One Eagle Fly" by Morrison Kincannon, a psyched-out funk bomb with a glorious blue-eyed soul twist, and a mystical sort of vibe that can proudly sit up there with the likes of Stills, Nash and Young - i.e. proggy but still groovy. There's an extended remix from Mudds, and the man goes for a kind of dub version approach; a new and different tactic to deploy over a rock tune, but effective nonetheless.

Review: Since Nick The Record has one of the deepest collections going, it's little surprise that his ongoing Record Mission series has delivered some killer re-edits of ridiculously obscure gems. For this third 12", he once again joins forces with Idjut Boy Dan Tyler to rework a trio of gospel-tinged cuts from the late '70s/early '80s. Arguably most impressive is A-side "Highway To Heathen", a gradually rising, off-piste, boogie-era disco jam blessed with killer talkbox vocals. On the flip you'll find the more straight-forward gospel sing-along of "For Heathen's Sake", and "he Touched Me", a slower, more soulful gospel excursion that benefits greatly from lashings of Tyler's trademark space echo and tape delay.

Review: Not just a super-rare set of dreamy soul jazz but also a neat piece of independent label history: JSR were a Jersey-based imprint with an open source attitude to their business, allowing ambitious young musicians their first break contract-free (albeit with limited pressings) In 1980 Coleman took them up on the offer, played most of the instruments himself and even designed the artwork: Taking Care Of Business is quite a literal title. It's literally brilliant, too; just check the Shuggy style vocal leans on "Due Consideration" or the swooning Roy Ayers style vibraphone magic of "Sweet Bird" and you'll see exactly what we mean. Stunning.

Review: Washington's Fort Knox Five have literally always been doing their thang. The quartet is made up of Sid Barcelona, Jon Horvath, Rob Myers and Steve Raskin, a collaboration of musicians who have given us a wonderful selection of music across many a genre. They've almost always appeared on their of Fort Knox label, so this new single for the Dinked imprint feels like a welcomed change in their releasing pattern. It's a one-track situation here, but "Don't Go" is a funk bomb capable of deconstructing any dancefloor form here to Detroit, and Joe Quarteman's zesty vocals are immediately hummable. Check that instrumental cut, too - pure, break joy!

Review: Pure Ghanaian gold, Disco Documentary: Full Of Funk was a rare private press released in 1979 never to be released again... Until now. Dusting off the long lost tapes with due care and attention, BBE have kindly reminded us that disco had much wider impact than the US and Europe. Nana Love's slightly nasal tones are instantly alluring, but it's the clam-tight musicianship that really bites. Big Bernard Edwards bass, shiny guitar twangs, extensive organ noodling and vibrant Afrofunk horns galore, this is a truly stunning document.

Review: If it weren't for young and energetic bands like Breakdown Brass, the New York soul and funk scene would be a true relic of the '70s and '80s era. Luckily, these whipper-snappers know how to lay down the truth, and their reinterpretation of Rick James' "Mary Jane" is a total winner - all brass and instruments, of course. On the flip, you have a brass version of Nadev Nirenberg's "The Horseman", a masterful adaptation of what is surely one of the most hummable rhythms ever. Limited!