…includes three bonus tracks: covers of Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time,” William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” and Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
“Johnny can do what he wants,” Sturgill Simpson told Uncut when his new alias debuted on 2024’s Passage Du Desir, which found him rolling through Paris streets “like a cork in a bottle” while listening to ‘70s soft rock and Serge Gainsbourg.
His first five albums proper had burned Nashville bridges during an odyssey through outlaw country, psychedelia, synths and Kentucky bluegrass, while tracing the five metaphysical phases of the Western soul.
Johnny Blue Skies blew this preordained cycle away. He feels more real this time round, not…
Category: soul
In the glory days of Italy’s library music session scene, Giancarlo Barigozzi and his cohorts were like Milan’s answer to L.A.’s legendary Wrecking Crew — if the latter were cutting one-size-fits-all soundtrack music for film and TV licensing. One main difference is that The Wrecking Crew never got to put their names on the records.
Sax/flute wizard Barigozzi and his peers worked on tons of sessions — and not just library music. They would get the call to come play when American jazz heavyweights blew through Italy, be it Joe Venuti or Gerry Mulligan. But in the wide-ranging world of library sessions, Barigozzi could wail in a genre-agnostic way, whether he was diving into electroacoustic experimentalism, chamber-jazz impressionism, early-adopter…
What began as a rather bizarre concept has fully blossomed, seven chapters in. Arguably, The Claudettes are the only band to successfully meld soul, rock, punk, and cabaret into an intoxicating stew. The juxtaposition of the two words in the title of Garage Glamour sums it up as succinctly as possible. The Claudettes take the raw, unabashed grit of rock n’ roll with a punkish flair, and combine it with a glitzy club vibe and even shady noir songs, seemingly right out of a soundtrack. In fact, Johnny Iguana, the band’s composer/pianist, is the co-composer of the original score of the Emmy-winning FX/Hulu series The Bear. His co-creator of that score, JQ, joined him to produce two tracks on this album, and Grammy-winning…
The Welsh-born, Sheffield, UK-based Kat Eaton is, for most of you, a refreshing new voice in the R&B/soul genre. What Happens Now is Eaton’s third album, and her most well-crafted project to date. Eaton and her longtime collaborator, producer Nick Atkinson, have been partnering since they were sixteen. They now have their own label. Needless to say, their chemistry is tight. Eaton’s voice is set just right in the crisp mix as she unveils a blend of soul, jazz-adjacent grooves, and splashes of blues and pop. Nothing is overdone, unlike too many female singers who overreach and, even worse, clutter their soundscapes with unnecessary noise. Yes, this is a superb recording, balancing the intimate with the expansive and personal, emotive tunes with those that are generally relatable.
It wouldn’t come as a surprise to any listener of Jalen Ngonda’s second album that the Maryland-born, London-based artist claims to listen to almost nothing released after 1972. Tracing out cadences reminiscent of Smokey Robinson over ’70s Marvin Gaye drum grooves and summoning the impassioned intensity of James Brown, Ngonda delves deeper into the vintage influences that furnished his 2023 debut.
‘Anyone in Love’ opens the album with a bold brush of strings and rolling drums. Gospel-inspired backing vocals are haloed in soft, organic reverb, creating a warmth and sense of space which producers Vincent Chiarito and Michael Buckley carry throughout the album. The title track follows: a solemn minor-key sermon with…
Returning with Ayô Dele, meaning “joy comes to me” in the Yoruba language, Afro-French collective Ireke serve up a suitably joyous blend of Afrobeat, soul, funk and more. At the centre of the sonic storm is Julien Gervaix, who plays sax, keyboards, bass and programs beats. His musical accomplice Damien Tesson offers up further percussion, guitars, keys and dub effects, while vocal duties are shared by a number of featured singers. The most notable of these, Beninese-Nigerian vocalist Nayel Hóxò, raps and sings in Yoruba and English with joyful abandon on slinky Afro-funk number ‘Ta Logbe Jongo’. She adds similar punch and verve to the smooth yet funky ‘Soulshine’. Elsewhere, regular vocal collaborator Agnès Hélène brings beautifully languid vocals…
Brian Jackson has always been an enigma. The multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger was Gil Scott-Heron’s songwriting and recording partner on nine albums, and the architect of the Midnight Band’s sound melding poetry, soul, jazz, blues, and funk. Following their split, he kept a low profile. Later he played sessions with everybody from Roy Ayers and Oneness of Juju to Kool & the Gang and Charnett Moffett.
Along the way he cut his own records, including 2021’s instrumental Brian Jackson JID008 and 2022’s This Is Brian Jackson. 2026’s Now More Than Ever, is a 19-track multi-disc set that revisits his material with Scott-Heron (the cover mimics the 1976 album It’s Your World). It was cut in collaboration with New York production…
Fela Kuti has been rediscovered all around the globe in the last 20 years in ever changing inspirational ways. Probably there is no major city in Europe or the US today without an ensemble that heavily references Fela Kuti.
…Fela Kuti in Dub takes us to one of Germanys hubs of Fela Kuti admiration: a small studio in the bluecollar district Untergiesing in Munich. This is the workspace of drummer, producer, dub fanatic, and DJ: Captain Yossarian. The studio complex is home to an illustrious group of musicians: Krautrock pioneers Embryo, Poets of Rhythm mastermind Jan Weissenfeldt, Franz Ferdinands guitar player Nick Mc Carthy or local (also Fela Kuti loving) Express Brassband who all work here. Occasionally bands visiting Munich…
…includes 20 previously unreleased tracks.
Allen Toussaint experienced a late-career revival sparked, ironically enough, by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He had to leave his hometown New Orleans after the hurricane, relocating to New York City where he started to play regular gigs at Joe’s Pub and, soon enough, he cut The River in Reverse with Elvis Costello. That 2006 album propelled Toussaint toward a greater audience, leading to more headlining concerts, two of which are chronicled on Rounder’s 2013 release Songbook. Recorded in 2009 at Joe’s Pub, Songbook features nothing more than Toussaint alone at a piano running through songs he’s written over the decades. He sprinkles in a New Orleans standard here and there — there’s…
Flying Mojito Bros released The Swamp Fox, an album featuring their remixes of recordings by late singer-songwriter Tony Joe White. Tony Joe White, known as The Swamp Fox, was a native of Louisiana and wrote such noteworthy songs as “Polk Salad Annie,” “Undercover Agent for the Blues” and “Rainy Night in Georgia.” White died in 2018 at age 75. White’s son and official archivist, Jody White, contacted Flying Mojito Bros (London-based duo Ben Chetwood and Jack Sellen) to collaborate with them on the remix album.
…”During the late 70’s and early 80’s, Tony Joe was blending country, swamp and disco into his own recipe of funky dance music,” Jody White explains. “With some help from the Flying Mojito Bros, these songs are about to see the light…
Sixteen killer 70s reggae funk and soul cuts from the likes of John Holt, Lee Perry, Cornel Campbell, The Cimarons , The Chosen Few and more featuring superb reggae takes on songs by artists including The Jackson 5, William DeVaughn, Diana Ross and The Supremes, War, The Temptations, Roberta Flack, The Stylistics and others!
Well-documented is the influence of American black music on Jamaican styles of the 1960s – from the birth of ska music, when The Skatalites ska-ified the jump-up southern USA rhythm and blues music of Rosco Gordon, Louis Jordan and Fats Domino, through to the creation of rocksteady when Jamaican artists like The Techniques, The Paragons, Alton Ellis and The Melodians turned to the slower rhythms…
They just might not call it by its original name, but trip hop is back. And if you need any further proof that it is coming back in a big way, than you don’t have to go any further than Black Salt, the new (second) album by Kiiōtō. Those who might have forgotten about the prime time of trip hop back in the mid and late ’90s, Lamb were one of the big names in this genre, and Lou Rhodes was lead vocalist and co-founder of that band, and he even got a Mercury Music Prize nomination. Now, he is joined by award-winning songwriter/pianist Rohan Heath to form Kiiōtō, both being in a sort of hiatus from making music.
Joined by several guests, notably guitarist Hawi Gondwe (Amy Winehouse), double-bassist Andy Hamill (4 Hero, Carleen Anderson),…
Fresh off the success of 2025’s Boleros Psicodélicos II, another star-studded collection of romantic ballads, Adrian Quesada formed Trio Asesino and took a slightly different path on their self-titled debut album. With his guitar providing the melodies, Jay Mumford’s drums the backbone, and Joshy Soul’s array of keyboards the texture, the set touches on hip hop, funk, jazz, laid back cumbia, and as it snakes and shimmies through eleven songs that won’t change anyone’s life but they will make it just a bit cooler for a while. The feeling is similar to his 2022 album Jaguar Sound, but where that felt like a producer’s album, this showcases Quesada the guitarist and prioritizes capturing a live band in a room. To that end, the sound is both punchy and relaxed, the group…
There are very few pressures in life as intense as a debut album. Sure, art isn’t the end-all be-all of life, but when that life revolves around an artistic output, your first introduction into the recorded world could make or break any promise shown for an artist. This sentiment, though, has been explored in countless ways, and most music fans are vaguely aware of the mounting pressure on an artist as the label-approved release date draws nearer. A debut is a chance to prove yourself, in the case of Brother Wallace, though, very little is left to prove. The natural gospel prodigy has been in music since he was a child, taking the lessons learned in his church choir and using them to lead him to performances with legends like Kirk Franklin and to getting up on stage at…
…includes three reimagined tracks: a revamped version of fan-favorite “Delilah,” a duet with Billy Strings on “Dirt – Macon version” and a cover of The Allman Brothers‘ “Ramblin’ Man”. The remaining nine tracks explore walking the line between letting go of old love and addiction.
Last year, Marcus King deviated from his norm with the Rick Rubin-produced Mood Swings. He scaled back his vaunted guitar and valiantly focused on his vocals, experimenting with soul. Now he follows that up by returning to his roots, reuniting with his longtime live band for their first album since 2018’s Carolina Confessions. The new release, Darling Blue, is a safe, guest-filled, country-tinged offering that still manages to deliver a few changeups to King’s sound.
Jacklyn records is famed among soul record collectors as the home of three great Darrow Fletcher 45s issued on the label in the mid-60s. The imprint was owned and run by his father, Johnny Haygood, and though it served as a stepping stone in Fletcher’s extensive career, it was launched for a different artist and provided Chicago soul fans with several great discs over its seven-year existence.
A teenage shop assistant who worked in Haygood’s record store called Paul Smith launched the label, following in the footsteps of the young Fletcher who had begun his career a couple of years previously. Though Smith only had two 45 releases, the three sides on them revealed a great voice and writing talent worthy of a much bigger stage.
Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow is the second album from funk innovators Funkadelic. Arriving in 1970 mere months after their trailblazing debut, the record saw the band honing their songcraft, while still allowing plenty of space for mind-bending exploratory jams. The album’s origin story famously involved a single marathon session on LSD. It marked the official introduction of legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and would go on to chart at No. 92 on Billboard’s Pop chart.
Factoring George Clinton’s surprise at hearing the voice of Martha Reeves during a retrospective playback of the ten-minute title track, there’s reason to doubt the Parliament-Funkadelic leader’s memory in his claim that Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow was recorded in a day.
Adam Kyriakou’s Department is a one-man band in the style of Neil Hannon’s Divine Comedy and Matt Johnson’s The The; others may pass in and out, but Kyriakou steers the ship.
Audacity Files proves to be the maiden voyage for what should be an interesting and impressive career in sonic development. “Shadow Play” embodies the freneticism of the Lennon-McCartney opus “A Day in the Life”: brass, loops, and percussion lunging at the unsuspecting listener. Incidentally, “Shadow Play” is the longest tune on the record: despite pushing the boundaries of pop, Department wisely keeps the runtime to a palatable two-minute average.
Purportedly inspired by a voyage to his ancestral Macedonia, Department incorporates…
Michael: Songs from the Motion Picture is the official companion album to the brand-new biopic, Michael. This album highlights 13 songs showcased in the film, spanning from The Jackson 5 to The Jacksons to Michael’s chart-topping solo success with “Off the Wall” and “Thriller.”
…Filling the superstar’s shoes is his nephew (and son of brother Jermaine) Jaafar Jackson, who reportedly will do some of his own singing in the film. Despite that, the soundtrack features only Michael’s original vocals. The movie’s screenplay has been penned by Academy Award nominee and Tony winner John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator on film; Red, Moulin Rouge! on stage) and also stars Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson, Nia Long as Katherine Jackson, Kendrick Sampson…
Five years ago, Michael Cavanagh, long-time percussion expert for psych-rock powerhouse King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, made his solo debut under the CAVS moniker with a self-titled effort.
The ten-song drums-only effort was an exercise in the drummer’s ability to capture a listener’s attention with exclusively drum patterns, resulting in a groovy, atmospheric effort that ultimately didn’t catapult CAVS into the solo spotlight like similar artists of his ilk. The difficult transition from band member to lone musician is a bumpy, often misdirected endeavor that rarely seems to go well for the artist who dares undertake it. Still, in traditional Lizard Wizard fashion, Cavanagh wasn’t discouraged with the difficulties of his debut, but inspired.