Nick Hakim is one of those artists you’ve come across whether you realize it or not. From his extensive collaborative history with the likes of Show Me the Body and Pink Siifu to his own solo output that seemingly set out to expand the mind, the multi-instrumentalist / producer / singer / songwriter has built one impressive, undeniable career. The self-reliant renaissance man is capable of conceiving and executing every portion of the creative process at its highest level, allowing Hakim to build these psychedelic sonic universes that are welcoming to the exploratory mind. His solo material and collaborations have never dabbled in the conventional, yet sought to change that norm, with Hakim’s innate experimental tendencies colliding with a natural knack…
Category: soul
Following a hiatus of nearly three years, Tramp Records return to their acclaimed Can You Feel It series with a fifth edition, resuming their treasure hunt through the oft-overlooked depths of the late 1970s disco and modern soul landscape.
As ever, the focus falls on long-lost private-press obscurities, unreleased recordings and neglected dancefloor cuts, with Bill Deal & The Rhondels sharing space with Ryjel’s ‘Heart’s On Fire’, Avatar’s ‘Been Thinkin’ About You’ and King Perkoff’s ‘When You Live In Marin’. Including bonus 7″ of a very rare disco single!
From extremely rare tracks to easily accessible ones and even unreleased material-this release has everything to make a collector’s heart race. Once again, these songs will get you…
The story of EJ & the Echoes represents a remarkable chapter in Michigan’s music history and the early American soul scene. Its origins date back to the late 1950s, when Everett J. “EJ” Gronda was already active as a young musician. While studying at Central Michigan University in the early 1960s, he met the talented vocalist Manuel “Manny” Holcolm. Together with other musicians, they formed vocal groups that soon performed throughout the state and even recorded near Detroit’s legendary Motown studios.
In 1963, Gronda founded EJ & the Echoes, a band that quickly gained popularity at dances, clubs, and weddings across Michigan. With Manny Holcolm as lead singer, the group developed a distinctive harmony-driven sound…
A gritty, veteran soul singer backed by a 12-piece band replete with blaring horns and background singers is your perfect summer soundtrack. You’ll be moving and grooving to What Can We Do?, the debut of The Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra (APSO) on Nola Blue. This is a follow-up to the band’s 2024 multi-BMA-nominated What Are You Waiting For? The APSO has a tradition of being fronted by great vocalists. After all, the band was initially formed to back the late Frank Bey. Willie Walker and Terrie Odabi have served as vocalists. The band is now featuring Willy Jordan, who built his reputation working with Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio and John Lee Hooker.
You may have gathered that the APSO is a Bay Area entity due to Jordan’s background.
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60th anniversary edition of Four Tops Live! offers even more from the two dates at Detroit’s Roostertail club which comprised the original LP. Now expanded with 10 tracks not featured on the original album, the concert features all of the quartet’s most scintillating hits for the label (“Baby I Need Your Loving,” “I Can’t Help Myself,” “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Ask the Lonely,” “Reach Out I’ll Be There”) plus a selection of popular favorites (Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” The Sound of Music‘s “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” The Beatles’ “Michelle,” folk standard “If I Had a Hammer” and Getz/Gilberto/Jobim masterpiece “The Girl from Ipanema”) and even a take on The Supremes’ then-new “You Can’t Hurry Love.” (The single topped the Billboard Hot 100…
Corey King brings a spellbinding, cross-genre fluidity to his third album, 2026’s Change the Wind. A trained jazz trombonist, King is also a singer/songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who has worked with a diverse array of artists including José James, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and Iggy Pop. He also took home a Grammy for his co-writing and production work on singer/bassist Esperanza Spalding’s Songwrights Apothecary Lab. He brings all of this experience to bear on his solo work, crafting a holistic blend of alt-R&B, indie rock, and electronica. The follow-up to 2019’s A Loveless Sunken Sun, Change the Wind is a deeply personal production that finds King once again revealing his many-textured sound. The album was also written and…
New Orleans funk and R&B legend Cyril Neville has released Don’t Wait Til I’m Gone, his first solo album in several years. Produced by trumpeter/ vocalist Shamarr Allen, the album features a wide-ranging cast of New Orleans musicians, including members of the Hot 8 Brass Band, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, saxophonist Donald Harrison, keyboardist Ivan Neville and Kermit Ruffins. The title track is a collaboration between Cyril and his brother Aaron Neville, who co-wrote the song with Michael Goods and contributes vocals.
Allen played a major role in shaping the record, co-writing many of the songs and arranging much of the horn work. One standout track, “Lemonade,” incorporates the second line energy of the Hot 8 Brass Band and was written…
The current popularity of primarily instrumental bands combining funk, blues, R&B and soul can’t be entirely traced to the UK’s New Mastersounds. But there is no question that the recently disbanded quartet’s output, which began in 2000, brought new life and a fresh attitude to a genre that experienced a brief commercial surge in the mid-’60s.
So, it’s no surprise that Pittsburgh’s Norside, who opened dates for the Mastersounds, would look to that quartet to craft their similarly-styled sound. Their second album, Coal &Soul, embodies that, albeit in a trio format. It’s no coincidence they landed on the label that New Mastersounds’ guitarist Eddie Roberts founded.
Credit for this keyboards, guitar and drums…
When Steve Lacy released “Nice Shoes” last summer — a teaser for his new album Oh Yeah? that dropped alongside his Rolling Stone cover story — the song took fans by surprise. Its frenetic breakbeat signaled a looming sonic departure for Lacy, whose Grammy-winning output includes virtuosic instrumentation for everyone from The Internet (their long-awaited new album is on the way) to Kendrick Lamar.
Even so, the song’s later moments, punctuated by a more familiar Steve plucking his guitar and crooning sweetly, pointed to something more dynamic. On his long-gestating album, Lacy builds an ambitious universe around those instincts, turning breakbeats, guitar ballads, trip-hop murk, and crude-almost-cringe humor…
Like another of the year’s biggest pop records, Olivia Rodrigo’s You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, the second full-length from the self-proclaimed “emotional junglist” Nia Archives is an album of two halves. The first documents its protagonist falling in love at breakneck speed; the second, the whiplash of sudden heartbreak. Unlike Rodrigo, Archives didn’t grow up starring on Disney Channel, a predestined route to success, but in Bradford, cutting her teeth on early 00s pirate radio, dancehall and landfill indie.
More than most major artists, Archives has carved out her own path. After leaving home at just 16 to move into a youth hostel in Manchester, she started teaching herself to make beats; eventually, she uprooted to Hackney and studied…
There is nothing ordinary about Fantastic Negrito. From his given Christian name of Xavier Dphrepaulezz to his career revitalization as a roots artist combining blues, soul, funk, and rock along with album titles ‘Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?’ and ‘Please Don’t Be Dead’ (3 nabbed GRAMMY’S), Negrito avoids following any existing blueprint.
That’s especially apparent when listening to Fantastic Negrito Alive, released July 17 via Storefront Records. Compiled from a recent tour’s most earth-quivering performances, this is the epitome of how a concert album should sound. Its 13 tracks veer way off-course from their studio versions, feeding off the audience’s energy, which then ramps up his own. His eclectic nature is fully exposed for this generous hour and…
The colorful combination of names on this collaboration is indicative of the vibrant music they create together. Americana singer/songwriter Grey DeLisle, who has been releasing rootsy country/folk/rocking albums for over 20 years, heard young soul singer Greene and was so impressed, she suggested they combine their talents. The effervescent, soulful and instantly loveable Grey & Greene, is the result.
The two initially dueted on 2025’s frisky Christmas single “I Don’t Want Nothing,” then decided to expand that to a (short) album-length project touching on retro-tinged upbeat soul, classic pop, rockabilly and even some gospel. Their secret weapon is producer/multi-instrumentalist James Intveld; a veteran of roots-oriented…
Przemysław Jankowiak, aka 2k88 (and fka 1988), is one of Poland’s most singular producers. Long associated with alternative rap and experimental electronics, he gained a cult following as a member of duo Syny and later lent his hand to some of the adventurous figures in the Polish mainstream. His music is, like his concerts, full of smoke: airy, cloudy, inscrutable, dreamy, and unreal.
Everything Always Changes, for We’re Truly Here started as a one-off special project for Kraków’s Unsound Festival. Jankowiak enlisted a trio of acclaimed, like-minded British artists who, like him, work across ambient, rap, R&B, and pop. The four musicians passed ideas back and forth, bringing forth their shared sensibilities and aesthetics: Rainy Miller delivers his signature…
FATHERS conjure a tropical, ’70s-inspired jazz, funk, and fusion atmosphere on their eponymous 2026 Blue Note debut. A supergroup, FATHERS features creative director/producer Kenneth Blume (aka Kenny Beats), keyboardist Keifer Shackelford, bassist/multi-instrumentalist Ben Carr (aka CARRTOONS), and drummer Nate Smith. While they formally came together in 2026, the group initially began as a one-off collaboration when Smith brought Kiefer and Carr on board his 2023 residency at the Montreal Jazz Festival. No stranger to cross-genre experimentation, Smith won a Grammy for 2025’s Live-Action, an album that showcased his broad-minded taste, dipping into funk, hip-hop, and sophisticated modal jazz. Here, FATHERS take a similarly…
The Story of Michael and Tanya is the fifth album by the award-winning the War and Treaty, and their debut on Atlantic Outpost. Wounded Iraq war veteran Michael Trotter, Jr. and gospel/R&B singer Tanya Blount met at a music festival in 2010. They married in 2014, moved from Albion, Michigan to Nashville and released debut album The Healing Tide in 2018. Their music covers vast stylistic and lyric territory; it embraces Black gospel, soul, country, blues, Americana, R&B, and adult contemporary pop with searing emotional honesty, spiritual sophistication, and hooks.
The Story of Michael and Tanya offers fingerpopping truth about their marriage, relationship, personal triumphs, contradictions, and trials in ten songs.
The 1960s were exhilarating times for the music business. Independent labels across the United States were creating overnight sensations almost daily. Creative hubs like Detroit, Memphis, Chicago, and Los Angeles were shaping and defining the sounds of tomorrow—today.
Among these vibrant scenes was Baltimore, Maryland—home to Chariot Records, a label that delivered a deeply soulful strain of R&B unlike anything else in the country.
Omnivore Recordings, the award-winning reissue label, is proud to announce the acquisition of Chariot Records. Founded in the mid-1960s by four friends from Baltimore who were all working in the record business locally, the label enjoyed a brief but impactful run from 1966 to 1972…
New Avatar marks a full-circle moment for Kelela, who started out playing in rock bands as part of Washington, D.C.’s indie scene before she began working with electronic producers and making more club-based music. The album’s stunning opener, “Idea 1,” layers ethereal, shoegaze-like guitars with existentialist lyrics inspired by Octavia Butler’s dystopian classic Parable of the Sower. Both a return to the singer’s roots and an exciting new direction, it begins a lush, emotionally gripping record which fuses multiple styles she’s explored throughout her career.
“Point Blank” is one of the album’s more club-influenced moments, with slowed-down jungle breakbeats underpinning frank lyrics about a dysfunctional, dangerous relationship.
Baby Rose‘s easy evasion of being classified as simply an R&B throwback continued after the release of her second album, Through and Through. Slow Burn, the distinctive contralto’s subsequent EP with BadBadNotGood, contained a stellar folk-soul collaboration with Mereba. Covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” and the Velvet Underground and Nico’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” — the latter of which was recorded for Materialists, in which Rose made her film debut as a wedding singer — further demonstrated a natural flexibility. While Yearnalism is another tradition-rooted R&B record more than anything else, it sees Rose subtly expanding her sound in a way that makes her even more suited for adult album alternative radio than urban contemporary stations.
It’s easy to romanticize New York nightlife — and sometimes you might wonder if it’s cheesy to do so. After all, the late David Mancuso’s foundational Loft parties have been the center of embittered schisms and fights over branding that call into question their founding ethos: “Love Saves the Day.” But what would New York City be without a little conflict, eh? And there are still plenty of true believers in the fiercely independent, dizzyingly multicultural, polysexual spirit that has kept people dancing in the half-century or so since Mancuso first blew up balloons and tuned on his huge hi-fi. Key among them are the Love Injection crew — conceived by Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele at a Loft party, and who are determined to keep the spirit alive through zines, record…
Toronto was always a sort of musical melting pot, so it is no wonder that the core trio of Toronto-based, Brazilian native multi-instrumentalist Felipe Sena with co-writers Artu Bastos and Dan McLay that goes by the name of Orbital Ensemble, has found its nesting place there.
With a help of a multitude of truly experienced musicians, this true ensemble has come up with its second album, Continua, recorded primarily live with the core six-piece that is often the manner in which Orbital Ensemble plays on stage, Sena, Bastos, and company have come up with something that is labelled quite precisely as neotropical psychedelic sound.
And yes, that is exactly what this mostly instrumental music sounds like – a combination…