EP Review: Heartbreaker Remixes - Crazy P

Crazy P seem to have come along way since they dropped the 'enis' and became just Crazy P. Once upon a time that name felt like a lead weight around their necks and yet they have happily outgrown it, becoming one of the UK's more dependable cross-over acts.

'Heartbreaker' retains the sophisticated disco edge the band have always focused on and applies it to the sort of soft house sound they have gravitated towards over the years. It's a refined, soulful track, full of detail - whether it's the muted blues rock guitars, the sweeping strings, the melodic but melancholic New Order-style bass line or the tight, live percussion. It's difficult to hear this and not want to check out the latest album, When We On, from which this is lifted.

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Heartbreaker Remixes - Crazy P

The label behind this release, 2020 Vision, selected the first remixer based on his ability to rock a party without sacrificing his deep and classic style. Its something Mark E manages to demonstrate with aplomb here. His mix turns this into a taught track full of nervous energy - the bass feeling cavernous and deep and each element cut into tiny snippets which are layered together to make something as haunting and beautiful as the original, but much heavier sounding. With gentle reverb and retaining parts of the original string section it gives the track another interesting twist on the post-punk meets disco sound it comes from.

The final mix comes from Huxley, who applies his trademark chunky house-meets-garage sound to the track. It's a stark yet elegantly achieved contrast captured on this record, those gentle soulful strings and the guitar work segueing into the harder, bass-orientated sections.

All three mixes here totally deliver in terms of quality and the overall package is varied enough to keep things very interesting. In other words, this is a release well worth checking out. 

Heartbreaker Remixes is released through 2020 Vision on 10 December. Pre-order on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link] or preview the EP on Soundcloud below:

Album Review: Funky Highlife - C.K. Mann & His Carousel 7

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Funky Highlife - C.K. Mann & His Carousel 7

C.K. Mann first rose to fame I'm the early 60s playing guitars in Ghana with Moses Kweku Oppong I'm the Kakaikus Guitar Band before moving to lead the band Ocean's Strings until 1966. Funky Highlife is the latest re-release in Mr Bongo's never ending pursuit of gems from the past, coming as part of the Classic African Recordings Series. 

Funky Highlife was originally released through the Essiebons label but according to the manager of that label, Dick Essilfe Bondzie, the album never reached the audience it could have due to an economic downturn in Ghana which subsequently lead to a lack of vinyl for vinyl factories. Bad times.

African music has often influence mainstream music, with regular growths in popularity and influence over the past few decades. Whether the post punk experimentations of the early 80s or the influence on hip-hop and soul in the late 90s or the subsequent re-influence on noughties indie via post punks revival. Funky Highlife is a fusion of African sounds, Latin American music & style and soul.

This re-release comes in two flavours - the original on vinyl, which features two extended medleys, and an extended CD with and extra 40-minutes of music across eight songs. It's hard to deny that this sounds richer, more authentic and ultimately better on LP, and since the vinyl release also includes a download code it is clearly the version to get.

The actual music is hard not to love - laid back Highlife fused to Latin-jazz elements and soul. The 'Asafo Beesuon' medley is gently strummed and hummed, an infectious and joyful patter. Melodies are plucked out in a relaxed way and the music and vocals create a laid-back mood. 'Beebi A Odo Wo' is a little less horizontal, a snappy and soulful track with sharper rhythms, jazz-influenced guitar and some well timed brass.

Highlife is a style of music originating in Ghana influenced by jazz, with horns and layered guitars commonly featuring. These days it's perhaps a little less common to hear it called out than Afrobeat, Nigeria's equivalent - and it lacks the kind of attention that Fela Kuti's success brought to the latter. It has still had periods of larger success as a genre though, rising to popularity in the in the 60s.

Funky Highlife, either in its original or extended forms, is music to embrace and cherish, to chase the blues and cloud away. It comes together to make something bigger than any individual moment - instead its a record to leave to unfurl whilst business of life goes on around you.

Funky Highlife is out now on Mr Bongo, available from Amazon.co.uk on LP or MP3 [affiliate links]. You can preview the album in Soundcloud below:

Album Review: The Incline Of Western Salivation Pt III - Alixander III

The Alixander III behind this release would actually be Alphonse Alixander Lanza III, who is almost certainly better known to you as the III in disco-house outfit Azari & III. The Incline Of Western Salivation Pt III is his first full length debut release and it kicks pretty much everything from his other outfit at the door.

Some facts about The Incline:

• It's long, although nowhere near as long as the press release suggests - 92 minutes in comparison to the claimed "almost 2 hours". Maybe it just felt that long. I'm pretty sure it did.

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The Incline Of Western Salivation Pt III - Alixander III

• The album is almost entirely vocal-free and if you come in expecting anything like the pop-dance tracks of Azari & III you'll find yourself a long way from Kansas. Toto. This is deep, dark, trippy techno and tech-house.

• At its best The Incline feels like an abandonment of inhibition, and that seems very much to be the ambition of its creator. 'Donuts' is psychedelic, intense and intimate - a tight, sweaty mess of electronic squelches and out-of-phase melodies.

• This album seems to signify a growing interest in minimal techno and electronic music. Minimal was frequently tipped for the big time (there's an oxymoron) back in the mid-noughties but it never really caught-on. I'm still not convinced it will - it just doesn't have the potential for mainstream cross-over that almost ever other genre does, by definition not much happens. That doesn't seem to deter the number of producers churning it out - in turns of output alone minimal electronic music only seems to be growing.

• Ultimately some of this is good, but a lot of it feels pointless. Dress it up as "challenging" if you want, I just don't buy it. I've listened to and covered plenty of minimal, techno and IDM over the years and it only really becomes anything more than drug music when you start to actually do something with it. Jaar skirts around jazz and soul, Stott slows it the fuck down and fills it with paranoia, Villalobos does everything he possibly can to it.

The Incline Of Western Salivation Pt III cares about me about as much as a three-year-old on Ribena and the old-style, artificially-coloured blue smarties. Stop beating me round the head and let me learn to give a shit. For every five minutes of interesting production work, texture and melody here there are another fifteen that just might make you view the pains of tinnitus in a whole new light. 

In conclusion:

• 90-minutes is too much.

• Ending on a 23-minute track is too much.

• 90-minutes is too much.

• Maybe I'm getting too old for this.

The Incline Of Western Salivation Pt III out on 7 December, available to pre-order on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link].

Single Review: Pledge Allegiance - The Rimshooters vs Snax

This new release on Her Majesty's Ship sees the Rimshooters duo team up with Snax to create a sassy little house twelve.

The slightly disturbingly named Rimshooters are Massimilliano Pagliara and DJ Rotciv. After meeting via social media back in 2010 they started working together despite the massive geographic distance between them, with Pagliara living in Berlin and Rotciv in Brazil. They've since got together and are based in Europe.

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Pledge Allegiance - The Rimshooters vs. Snax

Snax hails from the US but having travelled from Washington D.C. To San Francisco and then New York he is now also in Berlin. With a number of quality tracks to his name he's an artist worth following - 'Honeymoon's Over' in particular was a bit of a classic, a tight, funky and minimal house record.

'Pledge Allegiance' was originally started as a melancholic house record but somehow ended up being transformed into the ass-wiggling electro-disco record it is now. The track is pretty restrained - aside from Snax's vocal it's fairly unfussy, with a squelchy bass and simple drum patterns emphasised with some hand claps. It's Snax's personality and Prophet 5 synth solo that steal the show though - this is a record that takes off it's business suit to reveal a spangly two-piece silver bikini.

There are two remixes included in addition to the original. The Rimshooters acid dub loses the Prophet 5 synth in place of a fairly straight forward acid line - a little formulaic in comparison to the original. Snax is given control for the final mix, unleashing his new moniker Box Office Poison, for a dub. With a chaotic, echoey, strung-out vibe it manages to out-shine and out-weird the original - it's a muted, atmospheric and spaced out track that suggests Snax has a fair amount of talent.

It may not be quite the tentpole release that 'Honeymoon's Over' was but 'Pledge Allegiance' is good all the same.

Pledge Allegiance is released through Her Majesty's Ship on Monday, preview it below:

Album Review: They Shall Inherit - Menagerie

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They Shall Inherit - Menagerie

Tru Thoughts' latest album release comes from the prolific Australian producer and songwriter Lance Ferguson. He's best known for his work as Lanu and within the Bamboos but here he turns his hand to spiritual jazz. 

And it's the best thing he's ever done.

I used to be pretty into the nu-soul movement ten years ago whilst I was still at university - The Roots and the artists in ?uestlove's Okayplayer collective... Jill Scott and Erykah Badu all spent a lot of time in my minidisc player and D'Angelo's Voodoo remains the pinnacle of that sound in my eyes.

Ferguson takes us right back there, but not in a retrograde fashion. This sounds timeless and more real than much caught with the nu-soul label, D'Angelo aside - this sounds more modern and achingly old at once. As the appropriately monikored Menagerie, Ferguson plots an exploration of music and mood on They Shall Inherit. Just the opening title track feels big enough to be an album in itself, with it's looping, gradually evolving structure and dramatic spoken-word bridge. It's essentially jazz, with the Coltrane-inspired sax work to prove it, but this is warm and soulful enough to feel approachable despite its 12-minute duration.

The generosity demonstrated in the track-lengths on They Shall Inherit is thankfully balanced with remarkable restraint in their number - the album clocks in at 45-minutes over six tracks. Following that epic opening is the funkadelic bass of 'The Chosen', with vocals that form the music instead of dominate or direct it. This was a key aim of the project - to encompass the various parts (the Menagerie) equally as opposed to under the constraint of a more traditional band structure, with the exception of Fallon Williams' forthright and righteous vocals on 'The Quietening' the approach holds true

It's all glorious. 'Jamahlia' rides on speedy but gently brushed drums and loose, playful if again fast Thelonious Monk-esque piano playing. Roy Ayers himself provides a star-turn delivering his trademark vibes on 'Leroy And The Lion', which even plays with some jazz-guitar to great effect.

The only possible problem with this album is that all of Fergusson's other work pales in comparison. This is the real, starry-eyed deal - turn up the music and turn down the lights.

They Shall Inherit is released on 10 December through Tru Thoughts, available to pre-order on CD and CD & Vinyl box set on Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links]. Preview 'Leroy And The Lion' below: