Back catalogue: Funk

Review: Kalita Records are proud and honoured to announce the first ever official reissue of the four choice tracks from Randolph Baker's privately pressed sought-after 1982 disco album 'Reaching For The Stars', plus an unreleased instrumental take of 'Party Life' sourced from the original 24-track analogue master tapes.

Originally recorded at Jim Morris and Rick Miller's Tampa-based Morrisound Studios, 'Getting Next To You' features both a mixture of both local Florida talent plus jazz superstar Nat Adderley and bassist John Lamb at their finest. Originally pressed in a limited run of just one-thousand copies, with no distribution and most copies being sold in the local city and on Randolph's own merchandise table at the back of live gigs, original copies have long been sought-after by both collectors and DJs alike, acknowledged as a true grail and masterpiece in the disco scene and deservedly demanding extortionate figures to those lucky enough to find their own.

Here, in collaboration with Randolph, Kalita Records have chosen to re-release the four choice tracks from the album: 'Getting Next To You', 'Jazzman', 'Callin' Me' and 'Party Life'. The former is an in-demand horn and chant-filled disco masterpiece, which, as Randolph explains, concerns unity and "everyone on the same level in other words, everyone just loving life". It is arguably the song that Randolph is most well-known for in the disco and funk scene and perfect for the modern discerning dance floor. 'Jazzman' is an instrumental track with prominent trumpet and saxophone solos working with funky basslines to produce a truly great jazz-funk groove. It was "a tribute to Nat Adderley and Duke Ellington's bass player, John Lamb, for being so generous and saying yes to the project". 'Callin' Me' is a soulful disco number featuring the lead vocals of Laurie Erickson and is "about being on the road and ensuring loved ones that you will always come back home no matter what. It was like a promise to ensure loved ones they didn't have to worry". Lastly, 'Party Life' is a joyous disco track with a strong funk bassline and horns. As Randolph recalls, it "was the joy like after an actor finishes a movie. There was nothing but joy. It's finished; let's celebrate big time. Where everyone in the studio yelled at the top of their lungs - The End!" Here, with access to the 24-track master tapes we have been able to include the original version plus an unreleased instrumental take, allowing us to focus on the infectious bassline and make it even more ready for the modern dance floor.

Accompanied by extensive interview-based liner notes and never-before-seen photos.

Review: Internationally acclaimed Italian singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Chiara Civello unveils a new single, 'Sono Come Sono', blending a mixture of Neapolitan funk and club-infused rawness into four mixes. With the title roughly translating to 'it is what it is', the tune is a true, happy reflection on all things being immutable, and struggle being ultimately futile. Party on!

Review: Disco heads take note, here's a reissue that's been a long time coming. Cordial only have one record to their name, so perhaps it should have been called Their First (and Last), but that of course only adds to the appeal for devoted diggers. Lovingly repressed by Past Due, this three-tracker from 1979 is fit to burst with musicality, from the uptempo flourishes of 'Wave' to heartstring-tugging 'Special Love'. It's absolutely rooted in the era, with a high-end sound which makes it frankly shocking they never recorded more after this golden gem. Sharks be damned, let the music reach those who truly appreciate it.

Review: Summer is Dam-Funk season. The synth funk pioneer's sounds never seem more fitting than when cruising about on an early summer evening, top down (at least in your mind) with the sky turning burnt orange. He soundtracks that moment four more times here with 'Rise' being a more downbeat and pensive vibe, then 'Make It' getting a little more playful on the bump-n-grid beats and squelchy boogie bass. 'From A G Perspective' has low-riding Cali-funk in its bones and 'Free' closes with more lush analogue textures and shimmering chords on this vital, limited 12".

Review: Parisian jazz-funk, disco and boogie band Chatobaron - an outfit helmed by multi-instrumentalist Frank Chatona - have previously worked in the studio with house and nu-disco mainstay Art of Tones, so it's no surprise to see them recruiting the mighty Dimitri From Paris to mix their latest single. His A-side 'Club Vocal' mix is a genuinely riotous and celebratory affair, with strong group vocals (singing about how much they love 'your' music) and heady horns rising a jolly and joyous, piano-sporting disco-funk groove rich in low-slung bass and Cerrone style percussion. It comes accompanied not by one of Dimitri's deconstructed dubs, but rather an equally excitable 'Club Instrumental' mix that boasts all the goodness of his A-side mix minus the vocals.

Review: Earlier this year, French disco and jazz-funk combo Chatobaron joined forces with fellow Parisian Dimitri From Paris for the rather good 'I Like (The Music That You Play)'. While that was a wholehearted disco workout, this speedy sequel sees the band (and their high-profile collaborator) explore their West Coast jazz-funk influences via an inspired workout full to bursting with killer instrumental solos, dusty grooves, memorable motifs and a genuinely killer, cowbell-sporting percussion brerak. This time round, there are no Dimitri From Paris remixes; instead, dubbed-out disco favourites the Idjut Boys are on hand to smother the track in tape echo and dub delay. The result is a typically spaced-out, low-slung affair that naturally makes the most of the band's killer bassline and layered percussion sounds.

Review: Grammy award-winning jazz vocalist and much loved Chicago entertainer Kurt Elling has got a second album on the way soon - SuperBue arrives in Autumn - and has been building anticipation for it with a number of singles from it. This superb six track EP features special guest drummer Nate Smith as well as guitarist Charlie Hunter and has as classic feel that combines Eling's unique charisma and energy with his musical showmanship. All of the tunes are covers with a particularly fresh new version of Al Jarreau's 'Boogie Down' full of playfulness. This is another release that proves why Elling is so well regarded.

Review: Newcastle's Hot Biscuit Recordings pull the strings behind many a white label sub-imprint, one of which is the elusive Funtown Records. The orchestrator of this edits series is obscure, and so are the sample sources for each of the edits heard on this 12". On the A-side, we hear a tight-lipped James Brown-style breakdown and ensuing boogie number, on which it is insisted that we "know what makes (this singer) feel alright". Good to know! The B-side, meanwhile, errs far further in the direction of instrumental synthfunk, proving the versatile mettle of this raucous reworker.

Review: French label Boogie Butt gets us moving and grooving once more with a tasty new EP in the form of The Boogievison EP. It features a lead single from Ian Ash & Ella May, 'I Want To Thank You,' which pairs some jazzy chord work with a low-slung and warm house groove. The bass is funky and the vocals are seductive. It comes as an instrumental as well as a more direct and harder-edged Mr Doris & D-Funk remix. On the flip is Jessie Wagner & Fostin meet Ian Ash with 'Try Again,' a lovely soulful house groove with sublime and emotive vocals over another lush bass guitar. All very sweet tunes, these.

Review: 'Maledetta Quella Notte' is the first EP by Il Mago del Gelato, a new band from Milan (IT) with a strong Mediterranean imprint. This first album of theirs runs through funk, afrobeat and jazz; all the divergent strands make up the project, later convergent and blending in a nigh-perfect balance. Warm, watery, jazz-futuristic and easy on the ears, it's all held together by the uniquely Milanese fusion of vocoder, percussion, 80s synths, and roots guitars.

Review: Indeep's 1982 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life' is a stone cold classic. It has been remixed several times over the years and never stops attracting new audiences with each passing generation. On this latest reissue we get the 1980s New York-based trio's still hard-to-beat original version as well as the acapella and Smeddles's More Ass mix and More Ass dub. They are subtle reworkings that tweak the original for a little more dancefloor heft but do nothing to distill its still golden charms and catchy hooks.

Review: Wonky meets jazz in this impressive new jazz mini-LP from Japan. Takuya Kuroda is a highly respected trumpeter and arranger born in Kobe, Japan and based in New York City. 'Midnight Crisp' is Takuya's seventh studio album, entirely self-produced and following 2020's highly acclaimed 'Fly Moon Die Soon'. Learning jazz in a higher education environment, he's reapplied his skills to a new solo outing here, blending with his one true loves, afrobeat and hip-hop. The ensuing album is one of myriad midnight moods, tempered by many a virtuosic and mournful piano, digitally-edited drum brush, and trilling trumpet from the mouth of Kuroda himself.

Review: Tucked away on Louie Vega's fantastic - and vast - Expansions in the NYC album were a handful of tributes to disco legends Patrick Adams and Larry Levan. This double-pack brings those tributes to the floor. Vega opens with his Elements of Live band cover of Sine's Patrick Adams-produced 1978 B-side 'Chimi', turning the four-minute cut into a driving-but-bouncy, near 14-minute disco epic rich in restless bass, attractive vibraphone solos and spacey synths. On 'Change Your Mind', which is presented in both full vocal and instrumental forms, Vega recruits the voice of the Peech Boys, Bernard Fowler, and turns down a sparse, heavily electronic workout reminiscent of Larry Levan's early '80s mixes. It's genuinely great, as is the DJ Spinna-sporting, hybrid disco/organic house cover of Adams' classic 'Atmosphere Strut'. In a word: essential!

Review: DJ Hunee afro monster gets an official repress for Hot Casa in France. Calling it massive would bit an understatement.

Review: Dominican band Midnight Groovers was founded back in the early 1970s and went on to become known as one of the best around at what they did. They have a unique sense of sway and swing and cadence to their music and that is well exemplified by the A-side tune on this new 45 rpm. It makes for a double pronged attack on both body and soul. The flip side 'Ce bon comme ca' features an edit by Dominique Panolm, a singer-songwriter from Guadeloupe who keeps the energy but updates it with a more modern touch that is sure to ignite dan floors. Another superb offering from Atangana Records.

Review: Nick Bike makes a fourth - yes, fourth - 2024 Q1 appearance with 'Steady Rockin'', following up the prolific producer and editor's early-year swathe of releases, also including '808 Doves', 'Feels So Good', and 'Rollerskatin''. This is the only one of the four to be released on Bike's very own Chosen Spokes label, which oils the gears, shunts the V-brakes, and whips out the Presta for a veritable pedal-pumping in the medley/breaks/ soul/funk/dance veins. This time, we're in for a treat, with Bike reinterpreting a classic, making for a well-known melange sampled from bits of the Queen Of Soul herself.

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: From the grave, Prince is serving up a banger just in time for Christmas fun this year in the form of a one-sided 12" on Warner. It found him working with his trusty New Power Generation and features the 'damn near 10 min' mix of the song 'Gett Off' which is sure to fire up any dancefloor. It was originally a single - also served up as a one-sider - to promote Prince's new band with a cover that boldly declared that "Nothing can stop Prince and the New Power Generation" and was only issued on 1500 copies, so this is a great treat for fans to own all these years later.

Review: If you don't have love for Rahsaan then you don't have love for life. The American is a veteran of the edit scene and someone who can flip any joint into a joyous groove. Here, Hot Biscuit have assembled a limited double 12" that brings together some of his best 'Disco Edits, Versions & Dubs." 'Big Bisou' opens up with a jumble of Afro drums and loose limbed rhythms, 'Mamoe Lowe' then has tribal vocal chants and raw percussive energy, and 'Preto Velho' then brings a little more laid back soul to the party. '77' is a funky disco strider and 'Secondo' closes with some hard assed funk.

Review: Rahaan is a Chicago legend and master of the most soulful sounds in the studio. His new EP for BBE, 'We Are The Ones,' sees him joining up with a whole host of top musicians such as Marcus J. Austin and Nancy Clayton on vocals, Carnell C. Newbill on keys, Todd Swope on guitar and Lou Terry on bass. Between them they bring real dance floor adventures that are steeped in proper musicality. Ohio Players' Kenny Anderson on the horns brings some real soul to these four-to-the-floor cuts which mix up disco and house in the finest of fashion.

Review: Unidisc's 40th anniversary series, which offers fresh editions of sought-after disco and boogie hits, each accompanied by a new remix, continues. This time, they've decided to revisit Saturday Night Band's 'Come On Dance, Dance', which first surfaced on legendary NYC label Prelude way back in 1978. The chosen remixer this time round is Z Records chief Dave Lee, in pure 'Remixed With Love' mode. His EP-opening 'Disco Mix' is a genuine bomb that expertly rearranges and re-EQs the Saturday Night Band's original mix - with the odd dash of delay here and there - in true Tom Moulton style. He also delivers an excitable, largely beat-free 'Reprise' mix and a tidy, dancefloor dub style 'Instrumental'. A lightly edited take on the 1978 original mix completes an excellent package.

Review: Veteran Newcastle-based producer Johnathan Watson aka Smoove is back with the third instalment in the Multitrack Reworks, a new series that will be putting out limited edition, hand-stamped white label 12's that are made from reworked tunes constructed from the original multitracks. This one features the deep down and dirty P-funk of A-side cut 'Deep', while over on the flip Watson lends his Midas touch to a solid reconstruction of a certain deep funk classic by Slave, as well as a spruced up soul classic for all the heads out there on 'Superman'.

Review: Limited edition, hand-stamped white label 12"s from Smoove, reworking as though each of its remixed originals were axiomatic expressions of sonic perfection. 'Dance', for example, has a well known 80s classic reworked to stomping, heavyweight perfection - stretching its vocals to breathy ecstasy. Meanwhile EWF's 'Can't Hide Love' and 'Playing Your Game, Baby' by a certain Mr White, unite over a similar subject matter; there's no point in hiding your love. All aboard the underground love train.

Review: Star Creatures' latest release titled The Chicago Boogie Volume 2: This Love Will Last picks up where Attack of the Chicago Boogie Volume 1 left off, with Tim Zawada and Kool Hersh curating more selections of rare Chicago boogie tracks in collaboration with the Munster Boogie crew. Originally released last year, this reissue includes music written, produced, recorded and pressed proudly in The Windy City itself, with this vinyl edition featuring art from Ben Marcus based on versions of compliment cards and flyers from the scene in the 80s.

Review: Owhaaou features four cuts taken from the incredibly hard-to-find and obscure Metamorphose album that was released back in 1984 by this legendary Benin soul star. He blends rare Afrofunk with digital soul as evidenced by the recent reissue of Dans le Tchink System. Now this label celebrates his work once more with this futuristic and expansive new record which was recorded on 24 analogue track channels with skilled backing musicians such as Hilaire Penda on bass, Poly Rythmo de Cotonou's Daniel Bentho and more. The title track is a big disco party starter then there are more sombre moods on 'Magnifiec' and a silky edit of 'Zemidjan' before 'Mi Tchinker' gets that booty shaking.

Review: Archeo know how to hunt down a rare jam and give it the kind of reissue it deserves, so who better to handle this job? Tonica & Dominante was a studio project conceived by Antonio Iglio and Antonio Moxedano, which yielded a couple of singles and an album at the end of the 70s. It's a warm, organic sound before Italo disco swerved hard towards synthesisers and drum machines, and you can see why anyone digging for the rarest grooves would go crazy for the two tracks on this previously rare-as-hell 7". This new Archeo version ports the original tracks onto 12" and folds in two tasteful, clubbed-up dub mixes from Leo Mas & Fabrice.

Review: Chicago outfit Wavelength tap into the funk traditions of bands like Parliament here with a seductive and rather sleazy new EP for Soulistic 360. The whole thing has been arranged by Windy City soul innovator Rahaan and comes on white marbled vinyl 12". Opener 'Can You Handle This Funk' is slow, steamy, sensuous with its languid kicks, live, raw drums and drawled vocals all luring you into the groove. The remix is a subtle teak of the original and on the flip is 'Kemetic Dance Party' which brings more Afro style drums and some bold sax lines to get things going in a more energetic way.

Review: In 2016, Family Groove Records released a 12" of previously unheard 1979 demo recordings by Webster Station, a boogie-funk band from Dayton, Ohio whose studio efforts were initially binned by Warner Brothers for not being commercial enough. Demand for Family Groove's limited 12" of their recordings has remained high, so the label has decided to do a reissue. There's much to admire throughout, from the high-octane thrills of opener "Are You For Real" and the spacey warmth of the super-soulful "Can You Feel My Love", to the sugary sweetness of the Latin tinged ballad "Lady" and righteous closer "If You Feel Like Dancing", a killer combination of spacey synths, crunchy drums, urgent vocals and killer Clavinet lines.

Review: The Emotional Rescue label has done a superb job of shining a light on the British post punk scene over the last decade or so. It now does so once more in fantastic fashion with a compilation of tunes from Bristol's short lived but much loved Recreational Records. The 10 tunes have been remastered and recut and they all sound as good now as ever. Highlights include X-Certs - 'Untogether' and Electric Guitar's 'Don't Wake The Baby' which sum up the collection perfect with their jangling dub rhythms, heavily treated vocals and oodles of delay all twisting your melon. This releases was included in Bandcamp's Essential Releases 2022.