Afro Trees (2020)
Portrait – Afro Trees The Los Angeles-based quartet Portrait broke on to the contemporary soul scene in a big way in 1992. The group’s self-written and -produced “Here We Go Again,” displaying a keen knack for smoothly enticing vocal harmonies, ear-grabbing melodies, and a tight groove, rose to the top five of Billboard’s R&B singles […]
Challenges (2020)
State Cows – Challenges Any group that can kick out a gumbo of yacht rock and Steely Dan mid-career brilliance deserves our attention. And from day one the Swedish band State Cows has serenaded our ears with this caliber of music, the kind that introduces hearty jazz-rock fusion to palettes of soulful ‘80s pop. And like […]
Everything and More (2019)
Change – Everything and More: Complete Recordings 1980-2019 Inspired by the eclectic funk strains which Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards cultivated in the late 1970s with disco-soul collective Chic, producers Jacques Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi—along with songwriters/arrangers Davide Romani and Paolo Gianovio—built a distinctively compact, elegantly soulful sound with the studio group, Change. Tailored […]
Echo Funk (2019)
Son of Pearl – Echo Funk Musically, the artist Son of Pearl is constantly on the move. He can lend his silky tenor to soul ballads that also drip with a good helping of funk and blues as he did on his EP Songs Inspired by Beale Street. Then he can flip it and give […]
Christmas Together
Jonathan Butler – Christmas Together In 2013, Jonathan Butler delivered a holiday collection, Merry Christmas to You, rich with emotional tunes, internationally spiced melodic arrangements, and seasonally strong vocal prowess. The South African purveyor of spiritually charged vocal soul and jazz-inflected guitar mastery has made a career of fusing memorable R&B with jazzy undertones and gospel […]
Center Of the Heart (2019)
The playing field of contemporary jazz has never been as fickle as that of R&B or top-40/pop. Hence, a considerably larger number of uniquely talented players have had the opportunity over several decades to grow musically with their audiences at a creatively satisfying pace, while steadily accruing new listeners along the way. Some artists stick […]
Tomorrow’s New Dream (2019)
Incognito – Tomorrow’s New Dream Rich, raw and resplendent, with elements of traditional and acid jazz dipped into blends of funk, contemporary and neo-soul: it’s not an easy feat to accomplish a catalog encompassing so many genres all at once, not to mention finessing the art…just ask Incognito. A staple of stages and airwaves for […]
Sweet Deal: The A’s Sensual Mixes
Auteria Wally Winzer Jr. – Sweet Deal: The A’s Sensual Mixes Auteria Wally Winzer Jr. has been making magic in the studio since the 1980s as a musician and a producer. Winzer is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist although he mostly works as a drummer/percussionist. The Bay area artist is one of those guys who has […]
Illuminate: Green (2019)
Ascendant – Illuminate: Green In today’s world of R&B, the presence of household bands seem to be absent, at least in the bigger scheme of things — radio, TV, magazines. And because of the ever changing and evolving taste buds of black radio and its patrons, the world of bands has been thrusted into the […]
Welcome to My Life (2019)
Randy Muller Boom Chang Bang – Welcome to My Life Welcome To My Life, the new project by Randy Muller Boom Chang Bang, gives listeners an insight into where Muller is as an artist, as well as where he has been and where he is going. Listeners will hear a bit of the danceable funk […]
