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…
Category: funk
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…
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…
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…
The Karl Hector adventure continues with their fourth studio album. Since the release of Sahara Swing, the group have built a devoted following through their fusion of funk, psychedelic sounds and influences from across Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
Yolek digs deeper into the Krautrock history embedded deep in the soil of their native Munch – three of the most influential bands of the 1970s experimental German rock scene sprung from there: Amon Düül, Popol Vuh and Embryo. Drawing from those bands’ homebound and worldly influences, JJ Whitefield and Zdenko Curulija conceived and produced this kosmiche-werk. Influenced by these musical heroes, and following the path of Non Ex Orbis, Whitefield…
Maria is the debut long-player by London-based Brazilian bassist and composer Moyses Dos Santos. Originally from Sao Paolo, he emigrated to the U.K. in the late 2000s, where he’s made a name as a first-call session and concert musician who has worked with many artists, including Omar, Nile Rodgers, and Janelle Monáe. The album’s flavor is rooted in the styles and rhythms of northeastern Brazil filtered through 21st century British jazz, funk, and soul. Among the set’s many contributors are Azymuth’s keyboard ace Kiko Continentino, arranger Arthur Verocai, trumpeter Theo Croker, vocalist Lynda Dawn, Incognito drummer Francesco Mendolia, pianist Chris Eldred, and many others. The album is titled after Dos Santos’ mother, and given that root connection,…
…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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
In overseeing Club d’Elf since its inception over 25 years ago, founder-leader-bassist Mike Rivard has maintained a core lineup around which has revolved a colorful cast of collaborators as eclectic as the music they have played.
Loon & Thrush is no exception, yet its creation took place in the shadow of the passing of vocalist- multi-instrumentalist Brahim Frigbaine, not just an artistic contributor, but a practical point of reference for the group’s exotic pursuits. Much as Rivard collected himself to rally in the wake of serious illness prior to the gestation of the preceding Club d’Elf studio album, You Never Know (2022) so has he, with the customarily adventurous ensemble in tow, soldiered on in the wake of their departed comrade.
The satisfyin’ soul-pop group from the UK Mamas Gun are poised to follow up Cure The Jones with another collection that recalls what was great about American R&B in 60s and 70s. DIG! is their sixth studio long-player, featuring more of songs that take you back to the Motown, Philly Sound and Hi-Hat Memphis soul of the Impressions, Marvin Gaye, Spinners and Al Green, but with a contemporary vibrancy. It’s led by a gifted singer-songwriter and instrumentalist in Andy Platts (Young Gun Silver Fox) who has a limitless knack for hooks and blending vintage styles into a familiar but fresh approach.
Andy Platts’ got a gift for songcraft but even he get writer’s block sometimes. When he had the concept for a song mostly…
Khruangbin did not know if they were actually making an album. All they knew in the first frigid days of 2025, as they shivered in the Central Texas barn where they’ve recorded almost all of their music, was that the 10th anniversary of their debut, The Universe Smiles Upon You, was steadily approaching. Months earlier, they’d bandied about ways to mark the occasion, debating orchestral arrangements or compendiums of bonus materials and alternate takes. Thing was, back before Khruangbin helped establish a new modern idiom of semi-instrumental and gently psychedelic American music, there had been no bonus material, no unused songs. And how interesting would alternate takes or symphonic extravagance really be for a band whose aesthetic-essential vibes…
From joyful dancefloor productions to funky Afro-pop, reggae and gorgeously melancholic numbers, David Walters’ new album is an expansive affair. With a gang of guest producers including Captain Planet, Blundetto and Art of Tones onboard, the Franco-Caribbean multi-instrumentalist continues along the vein of his 2023 Soul Tropical album: a maximalist channeling of eclectic Afro-Caribbean themes, so brightly coloured that it often masks the personal burdens carried in his lyrics.
Always a great collaborator, Walters is joined by Fatoumata Diawara, Keziah Jones and Philo, who add their wonderful vocal talents to standout songs. However, the soul of the record remains Walters’ clear voice and guitar, the full-bodied production never obscuring how…