Schema Italy Schallplatten & 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 and Gianluca Petrella follow up last year's beautiful "African Spirits / New World Shuffle" with two more lavish instrumentals. "Sun Song" lives up to its name with wave after wave of heated musicianship from the belting harmonies to the light-touch keys. "Nigeria" taps deep into the source too as it drives us through the heart of Lagos with full horns and sweeping keys. Spiritual, sun-splashed and vital.

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: Another two club bangers from The Invisible Session's album repertoire, as remixed by the hugely influential UK DJs, Phil Asher and Faze Action (aka the Lee brothers). The two club re-works are in slick UK dance style. The appeasing feeling in the song "I Knew The Way" remains, although it is elegantly transported to the clubs' atmosphere courtesy of the touch given by veteran DJ/producer Phil Asher. Even though the bass drum is in 4/4 the result is always soulful, ever groovy and never predictable - as proved by Mr Asher’s care for details and sound effects, as well as the twiddled keys by non-other-than Mark De-Clive Lowe. This vinyl presents the vocal piece in fine soulful-house style on Side A, whereas on Side B is to be found the remix of an instrumental piece in the album "Heroes Of The Conquest". More driving and faster than the other 2 instrumentals of the album, "Invisible Blessing" and "Three For You", this re-work of it by respected dance-duo Faze Action is rich in bongos, sound effects and delays. In a smart way the powerful horn section of the original piece is here, led to impress and shake the tune to a possibly even higher extent, melting the Latin-jazz influence into a strongly rhythmic club tune. Tip!

Review: Stefano Tirone has been a stalwart of the Italian scene since making his debut on legendary Italian house label Calypso Records way back in 1992. Since then, his productions have become increasingly more jazz and soul focused, with a sizeable side order of groovy downtempo beats. His latest seven-inch single begins with "Try My Love", a hazy chunk of head-nodding jazz-funk/soul fusion rich in languid synthesizer solos, lazy grooves, hazy horns and soulful vocals. It's really good all told, though we'd argue that flipside "Odoya" - a wiggling chunk of Afro-tinged mid-tempo funk - is even better. Either way, it's another rock solid release from the effervescent Tirone.