quête:sweet

Funky soul-jazz organist Caesar Frazier crafted superior Hammond funk. 75, his second LP, is a rare gem. It’s comfortably his greatest artistic statement.

The follow-up to Hail Ceasar!, it’s a taut, grooving set that expands his sound and, put simply, it’s got better songs. The key elements of his debut album are all there – production from maestro Bob Porter, accompaniment from hip players (Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, Cornell Dupree, John Tropea) and arrangement from Horace Ott - but the overall sound is elevated. The tightly jamming, expressive jazz-funk makes for a richer, fuller, more satisfying experience.

75 is a mixture of hard-driving originals, deeply beautiful slower numbers to vary the tempo and a couple of classy covers. The crazy bombastic “Mighty Mouse” - a riot of horns, organ and in the pocket drums - became an acid jazz classic at Dingwalls and it’s easy to see (hear?) how. A blissed out, lushly instrumental take on Seals and Crofts’s “Summer Breeze” follows, perfect for those sunshine sets.

Side A closes with the heavenly “Sweet Children”. A loping, funky jazz masterpiece famously sampled by Kanye West for Common’s “Real People” from Be. It opens beautifully, with soaring sax and a funky horn section combining with weightless keyboard tones atop snapping drums. Unsurprisingly, the excellence endures right through to the end.

The B side opens with perhaps the album’s most famous track. "Funk It Down” contains the familiar “I can feel the funk” vocal refrain throughout. But it’s the gorgeous, insouciant bridge that you should all know and love, having been used as the hook for Gang Starr’s “Ex-Girl To Next Girl”. A great cover of Stevie Wonder's “Living for the City” comes next, with an unforgettable bass-line which anchors the entire heavy rhythm section workout. Dizzying organ, triumphant horns and sun-dappled guitar grooves combine to create “Walking On The Side”, rounding out a pretty smoking set.

This is one of those rare 70s funk-soul-jazz LPs on which a bad track cannot be found. It’s all essential. So of course finding original copies on vinyl at affordable prices has been tough for years.

Mastered brilliantly by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman and with painstakingly reproduced artwork by the Be With team, this fresh Be With reissue ensures this legendary LP now sounds, looks and feels as sensational as it should.

This is some serious top shelf material out of Baltimore and a certified masterclass in sweet symphonic soul. Optimistics was originally released in 1970 on Turbo and it’s every bit as essential as The Chi-Lites, The Delfonics and The Moments yet nowhere near as known. Those original copies are ridiculously rare and, of course, the prices are equally ridiculous.

Optimistics is a killer LP throughout, beloved of discerning hip-hop producers worldwide and routinely championed by the legendary Pete Rock. The genius George Kerr has handled the production on what is an album of beautiful, naïve soul for mind and body. It’s bursting with goodness and, like the best of its genre, it radiates a heart-breaking ambience that cuts right to the core.

The band of Billy, Harold, James, Charles and Jerome are described on the back cover as “five young, black knights who have embarked on a musical crusade and they're gonna slay a lot of dragons along the way”. We’re not entirely sure how many mythical serpents were dispatched during the making of this album but we can certainly attest to the sense of evangelical drive.

Evergreen opener “You Put Something New In My Life” is a heart-stopping ode to a transformative love. A ballad with spine-tingling chord changes and melodic switch-ups to spare, its sweeping strings and precise drums complement the falsetto delivery perfectly.

It’s followed by the equally beguiling “Let’s Love”. Another string-drenched harmony ballad, it revolves around delicate piano and distinctive guitar lines, crying out to be recontextualised by the best sampling technicians. Closing out the A side, the wonderfully restrained “Love Is God Almighty” is harp and horn-driven, barely-there soul from a higher plain. Heavenly.

Ushering in the flipside, “Should I Let Myself Go”, sampled recently by Knxwledge, is sensational guitar-soul with a yearning that could bring the most hardened soul to tears. It’s followed by the uptempo, Temptations-funk of “Man” and quietly-great “If I Could Influence Man”, where the competing vocals ride a chugging, funky breakbeat and delicious guitar licks. The refreshing, groovy “Say It Baby” is an appropriately positive, upward looking closer. Its sentiment and feel speaks directly to both the band name and the title of this, their only album. Truly optimistic.

The whole LP is a winning blend of slow, spine-tingling ballads and joyously upbeat tracks. It’s a case of A+ vocals, melodies and harmonies over beautiful playing and arrangements. It deserves to be canonical.

This fresh reissue has been mastered with the usual care by Simon Francis and cut by the legendary Pete Norman. The artwork has been lovingly reproduced by the Be With team.

Optimistics should be known to a much wider audience. We’ve hopefully gone some way towards rectifying that.

Rites Of Passage' traditionally refer to rituals distinguishing movements from one period of life to the next. Solitary Dancer's debut LP evokes a retrospective of these experiences, organized into four acts: coming into being, detachment, liminality, and re-incorporation of the self. This narrative calls for a self-exploration of moral corruption, loss of innocence, social rebellion, and societal disillusionment.

I felt totally unrestrained making this album” says Lindstrøm about his 6th solo album On A Clear Day I Can See You Forever (a title inspired by the 1970’s musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever starring Barbra Streisand). “I’ve listened to Robert Wyatt’s solo albums and his Matching Mole’s debutalbum a lot lately. It so effortless, fearless and free. And not insisting. I was very inspired by this” In the autumn of 2018, Lindstrøm composed a commissioned piece for Norway’s premiere art centre Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. Sketches from the three sold-out performances became the foundation for the new tracks. “I decided to keep some of the initial ideas and develop them further. All the songs are based on long one-take recordings”, says Lindstrøm “Also I’ve been very conscious about the music on the album not exceeding the length of the physical limitations of the vinyl-format, finding that 2 long tracks on each side were the perfect balance for this album” This is also the first time ever Lindstrøm has made an album entirely with hardware instead of computer-plugins. He utilised thirty plus synthesizers and drum-machines during his performance at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. The experience inspired him to embrace a similar set-up when making the album. “The joy of making music on actual physical objects and devices makes a lot of sense to me now. After working on a computer for over 15 years, I don’t think I’ll ever look back” he says with an almost childlike excitement. It was the accessibility to his enviable collection of music gear – largely consisting of sought after synthesizers – that allowed Lindstrøm to experiment so freely with ideas and soundscapes. “The title track is a 10-minutes improvisation on the Moog Memorymoog. I liked the loose feel so I decided to keep everything unedited. The other tracks were written and arranged prior to the recordings. I then set up the instruments needed for my sessions, then recorded more or less everything in a single take. I’m really happy with the way this album came together.” Lindstrøm has cited classical music as an inspiration the last couple of years “I used to study classical music at school. Back then I was listening to a lot of Opera, orchestral music and solo music on the piano. Listening to classical music again has been a revisit to my childhood days, just like I did when I embraced the 80s in the early 2000s”
Once embracing the freedom and the joy of making music without inhibitions, immersing himself in to the physical realm of making music with hardware, Lindstrøm learned something new not only about music – but about himself.
“I guess I've been trying to re-educate myself”

The Goods are back with a second single, "Peach," a collection of moods with an obsession for chasing the funk. When their vocalist Black Tree heard the beat for the first time in the studio, lyrics and melodies flowed instantly. He says: "My hope is that it becomes a feel good anthem for sexual liberation. Freedom from shame is after all about opening yourself up to the world and that act of vulnerability breaks down walls and allows us to come together." Reminiscent of early Prince, "Peach" is sure to keep you dancing through the Summer with a tasty combination of sweet melody and juicy rhythm.

Before an upcoming album in 2020 on Heavenly Sweetness, Mama is the first single. A track in which the balafon’s woody resonance, the meditative flute and the female choruses return to the Creole roots of David, recall the memory of his Caribbean grandfather exiled to New York but, above all, a title dedicated to his grandmother, who after the last soaring electro-disco, she comes to declaim the text on the ultimate measures. David Walters will have thought of it, conceived and realized in close collaboration with Patchworks. Then, in the wake of the single Mama released in the month of each of them took the title, isolated himself in the studio with instruments and machines to come out only with a total reinterpretation, but especially personal, of the title. Hammering bass drum and snare drum bursts, David has entrusted the direction of operations to the rhythmic, and it is one after the other that digital elements were invited to transform the original maternal softness into a boiling soundsystem. Synths their strings on the hum of the bass, the hypnotic power of the riddim remains.
Two remixes, two atmospheres. The Patchworks scene is set in a jazz-funk setting, an heritage from Roy Ayers and Lonnie Liston Smith. Powerful drum, enrobing bass, the Fender Rhodes becomes a soloist, motivated by this irrepressible groove, first become a soloist. And that the meshes leave the hands of the balafon player to pass in those of the vibraphonist.

Klein's offbeat singular vision continues to defy classification. Her acclaimed, self-released records – Lagata, Only and CC – along with Tommy for Hyperdub and her theatre musical Care, have allowed glimpses into Klein's uniquely spirally perspective on vocal abstraction, disarming experimentalism and pop culture wonderment. Yet these chapters have also served as masks to conceal the artist's own personal crises of self-belief, misrepresentation and belonging.

An 18-month writing process led to her new album Lifetime. It's an unexpectedly literal body of work which Klein compares to "giving someone your diary." Lifetime embraces the inevitable cycles of existence, phasing through moments of brutality, vulnerability, estrangement and unexpected fortitude. Lifetime embraces the inevitable cycles of existence, phasing through moments of brutality, vulnerability, estrangement and unexpected fortitude. Every sound in Lifetime is intentional, every influence—from 'King of Gospel Music' composer James Cleveland, to early 18th century tonalities in the b side, the work of 'race film' pioneer Spencer Williams, the residue of the religious experience is deeply personal. The 12 songs of the album are pieced together like a puzzle; seamless transitions connect each of its compositions in a reverse chronology, while every chord from every song is echoed someplace else.

What's been hinted at in Klein's live performances is now realised in full for Lifetime. Less vocal work allows her to be even more expressive, and in eschewing a tendency towards brief, truncated sketches, each song serves as its own long conversational piece, committed to realities of a lived experience. The artist who once grappled with self-doubt has set about breaking the cycle of insecurity for others like her, while mindfully chipping away at the conventions of classical music.

Like its artwork, Lifetime addresses intersecting life cycles: the inner and outer selves, hypermodernity versus history, living nightmares and dream states, while seeking the light and darkness in both. Part 1 opens with unmistakable Klein flourishes on the title track. Gusty pads, anxious, frayed-edge static arcs, and craters of deep negative space, all of which melt down to the clean slate of "Claim It," which is a tribute to embracing one's own blessings. "Listen And See As They Take" and "Silent" form their own microcosm, as the sound of crackling kindling burns backwards into imposing structures of distorted strings and disembodied marching drums, before returning to heat and ash again. "For What Worth", in collaboration with sound artist and saxophonist Matana Roberts, explores the kinship between two artists whose shared exploration of lineage leads them both toward uncharacteristically sweet clarity.

Part 2 is further steeped in black expressive styles of the past. "Enough is enough" links the Lifetime narrative to the broader diasporic black experience, inhabiting every chamber of a harmonica with ghostly notes of the present and past, as fragmented gospel chords reflect spiritual bonds between self and the divine. "We Are Almost There" begins the journey with nothing but the looped structures of multitude of voices. The drums and dischord of "Never Will I Disobey" wordlessly create the conditions for "Honour," a near 10-minute composition where crossed boundaries and crossed wires are exposed in real time, and sharp expressions of hurtfulness, accountability and corrupted expectations are rendered beautiful in representational form, via sustained synth tones which hum, jab and flit in natural disharmony. The interlude "Camelot Is Coming" draws on the choir tradition to prelude the spoken word recounts the cycles of trauma and death that form "99." Lifetime closes with the dystopian swirl of "Protect My Blood" a composition which details an excruciating rift, before blooming into serenity as it draws to a close.

Klein's Lifetime is laid bare, from the end to the beginning, and cycled over again. From her place within her family, to their place within her, to viewing the fragility of culture through the lens of memory. It's a lifetime, an embodiment of young livelihood, and an end as much it is a beginning.

The only cover tune on Carlton Jumel Smith's "1634 Lexington Ave." album is not really a cover at all, since it was first cut by Carlton himself already 10 years ago. The sultry 2009 edition of "I'd Better", that was put out on the short-lived UK Soulchoonz label, is a nice piece of programmed mid-tempo modern soul. The new version, now getting a 7" single treatment on Timmion, still sounds miles away from the polished earlier effort.

It starts off with a nice guitar led beat before settling into a sweet Tighten Up groove, a funky road which still has plenty curves to explore, even for Cold Diamond & Mink, who are certainly not lifting water from this particular well for the first time. What remains naturally is Carlton's ultra-soulful vocal performance, and a message of manning up to the max, staying true to your word in front of something divine.

It's not that often you hear a more recent version of a song sounding so that you would think it's the old version. Essentially, what you get is a beautiful piece of xover soul, with timeless swagger, and an instrumental with soulful legs of its own.

NO MORE don't need much of an introduction - the legendary Kiel-based (No)Wave / PostPunk band project took the worlds dancefloors by storm with the release of their seminal single "Suicide Commando" in 1981 which was later re-introduced to the Techno / Electro youth of the world, when Munich's DJ Hell famously reinterpreted the tune in 1998.

Still actively touring and releasing on a regular NO MORE are now making their debut on the freshly launched Intrauterin Recordings-offshoot EL CABALLO SEMENTAL..

The labels cat.no. 001 is a first time on vinyl release taken off NO MORE's "The Return Of The German Angst" digital mixtape and sees one of the bands hit tunes being reworked in a unique, highly captivating manner, pressed exclusively as a limited to 200 copies whitelabel edition on purple / violet vinyl.

"123456789 (baze.djunkiii + Herr Brandt Dream A Nudream Remix)" exceeds the bands natural musical realm by far and transfers the song into MoombahGoth / DubWave territories previously unheard of, not only for a classic band like NO MORE.. The rework picks up latest developments from the urban and bass music world whilst keeping the haunted vibe of the original songs chorus intact, slighty references NuBeat / PostPunk and Dub, adds lush, dreamy Cosmic guitar textures and even winks to the underground whistle and rave posse with a sweet as candy piano breakdown.

In their conjunctional remix work we see Intrauterin Recordings-founder baze.djunkiii, quality electronic music activist and prolific DJ for more than 20 years, and Herr Brandt, founding member of the classic German Wave / Indie / Alternative outfit The Convent as well as of the praised underground Synth Pop / Minimal Wave band Sonnenbrandt, effortlessly merge the best of two musical worlds to create something new and captivating, like they used to do on the decks with their former BETA-ZERFALL parties which were the main and initial reason the two of them and NO MORE came together in the first place.

a A- 123456789 BAZE.DJUNKIII + HERR BRANDT DREAM A NUDREAM REMIX

Tribe classic and olschool... superb sound A-Class underground … sweet and fat ! MUST HAVE from Vinyl Bleu

Indigenous:
music; homegrown, unadulterated, absolute
Drivetrain (Detroit, USA) – Alice
Derrick Thompson delivers a dark and moody banger of minimal groundwork and amplified momentum, culminating in acidic intensity.
Detune (Ghent, BELGIUM) – Maple Fever
Autographed by an unshakably solid bass line, with an ornamented shower of sumptuous pads raining down over a panoramic 4/4 beat terrain.
G-Prod (Bordeaux, FRANCE) – Motif
The toxic rhythm is indisputable and the alluring chord progression is seductive in this energized elastic groove.
Jace Syntax (Glasgow, SCOTLAND) – Hologram World
Submersed in a sea of luxurious strings, a tribal explosion regulates a merciless bass riff, peppered with sweet melodic inflection.

Kraak & Smaak's 6th studio album - 'Pleasure Centre' is the culmination of two years hard work since their critically acclaimed 'Juicy Fruit' LP and their first Kraak & Smaak LP released on their own label – Boogie Angst. As expected it's a glorious record packed with future classics, flitting between funky dancefloor focused jams and more relaxed downtempo affairs.

The album has a definite US West Coast vibe to it and sees them fuse classic 70's and 80's yacht rock, dream pop, and indie influences in with their signature electronic funk sound. And this result is no mere accident or emulation… Working on the demos in their own studio before travelling to LA for a month last year to meet and work with featured artists, they stayed in Echo Park and recorded in local studios and sometimes even in the homes or backyards garages of their collaborators.

Hand- picking the best of the local talent: dance diva - Gavin Turek, indie upstarts - The Palms and dream pop dealer – Satchmode all contribute their talents to the cause.

The Dutchmen have earned a deserved reputation in particular for the A&R side of the industry, with both the discovery and collaboration of new rising acts high on their agenda. Previous successes include working with Parcels, Alxndr London (championed by Annie Mac) Eric Biddines (6Music playlisted) and Cleopold (signed to Nick Murphy fka Chet Faker's own label). And they continue to uncover hidden gems outside of LA on this record too...

Moon Boots collaborator – Nic Hanson, Jalapeno Records' gospel/soul powerhouse - Izo FitzRoy and soul man Wolfgang Valbrun (Ephemerals/Kungs), New Zealand's imugi and previous collaborator and soul songstress - Sanguita are accompanied by regular members of the Kraak & Smaak live band - IVAR and Berenice Van Leer across 15 fantastic new tracks.

'Pleasure Centre' is everything you'd want in an album and everything we've come to expect from these dance stalwarts – innovative, relevant, and modern tracks with great production and exciting guest features that are guaranteed to fire up your own pleasure centre!











k 11 Sweet Time (feat. Izo FitzRoy) clip

Moon Diagrams is the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Two years after his acclaimed debut album Lifetime Of Love, Archuleta returns with Trappy Bats, a mini-LP that interweaves three brilliant new Moon Diagrams tracks with radiant reworks from Shigeto, Angel Deradoorian and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Trappy Bats was largely recorded in a single night as a means to process the intense intersection of Archuleta’s social, political and personal hysteria. Having been arrested for an unremembered missed court date, Archuleta spent 24 hours in a holding cell, offering ample time to reflect on his life, the current state of the nation (the jail televisions were showing a constant feed of the then-active Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville) and the other inmates. Upon being released the next day, Archuleta found himself suffering from a bout of insomnia and feeling the need to process everything through music. Here, Archuleta is in his freest and most grateful state, channelling the turmoil and confusion he was experiencing into an unencumbered fit of creativity. It’s pure, unadulterated escapism with an even more callous palette of sounds than before, clearly split between two moods. On what you might call the ‘up’ side, the title track could be the sonic spawn of Not Waving and Terrence Dixon: a snarling mix of percussive clatter and washes of orchestral tones coalesce into a pulsating groove across its almost 12-minute runtime, the underlying ’80s aesthetic making it feel like a turbo-charged Shep Pettibone remix of New Order, looped to infinity. Detroit electronica don Shigeto goes even further and implodes the track into a kaleidoscope of bone-jarring, viscerally giddy dance music. Over on the ‘down’ side, ‘Wipeout’ is a slow-motion waltz of dusty piano and clattering percussion loops that coolly stumble along with the woozy, nocturnal flare of The Caretaker or Philip Jeck. The haunted reverie ventures even deeper with a beatifically electrified ambient re-imagination by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Daisychain’ goes almost completely off the grid, offering up a sweetly submerged slab of constantly evolving murkiness in the vein of Demdike Stare or a dosed Andy Stott. The sweet shuffle levitates even higher with a celestial re-interpretation by sonic visionary Angel Deradoorian, formerly of the Dirty Projectors. The end result is an extended traipse through Saturday evening fever-dream techno, Sunday morning cigarette jazz-pop and every blank thought in between.

Man Tear are back with this high-energy emo-disco record, originally scheduled for release some
11 years ago! A sweet little 7'' is what their equally fast-footed and broken-hearted fanbase are
finally being offered. On the record we find two captivating dance pop ditties from the greatest
band to never make it, once again proving that it’s all about love - not about emotions! Let’s hope
this release is the spark that sets Man Tear’s future ablaze. Let’s hope for death to self-loathing!
Death to expectations! Death to laziness! Man Tear are back, maybe!

The album »Pillars of Salt« creates a space of freedom and activity in which Ozan Tekin shows his various skills as a keyboard player and producer, but also turns his innermost to the outside: Nothing sweet or narcissistic here. Three of the seven tracks were produced for the independent Turkish film »Tuzdan Kaide«, which had its premiere at Berlinale 2018. The surreal epos is transformed into a seductive hypnosis, not least thanks to Tekin’s music. Although just a few people have heard about Ozan Tekin before, the artist from Istanbul has already shown up in prestigious scenes: as the keyboarder of the Libyan disco star Ahmed Fakroun, as a part of Cologne’s nextbigthing Boddy and also under his singer-songwriter alias Seyrek Rifat.

In the years before ​Hunter Lombard​ perfected the gentle art of juxtaposing mega breakbeats with lush synth hooks, the New Yorker was an active rock musician. Citing the afterglow of her guitar background as a big influence for her current melodies and timbre, Lombard inhabits a sparsely populated intersection in dance music. For ​Schloss’​ third release, Lombard connects the dots between sweet rave nostalgia and clublands latest wrinkle. She has previously released on Volvox and John Barera’s label Jack Dept, and can often be found behind the decks at Elsewhere, Good Room or Bossa Nova Civic Club.
Slow Foam​ is mixed and mastered by Matt Karmil.

The Pendletons take a bold step with their first full length album, 2 Steps Away, releasing this spring on the Bastard Jazz imprint.

Recorded in San Francisco with a rock-solid band consisting of some of the best musicians in the Bay Area, including guitarist Carl Locket (Shalamar, Rick James) and Star Creature recording artist Elive, the duo taps into a classic soul/boogie sound that rides a wave of '70s and early '80s funk with ease but somehow remains true to the excitement of those classic recordings without being overly nostalgic. The music shines, as does the songwriting, which is honest, undiluted and spiritually inspired. Disco horns, heavy percussion and slap bass punctuate dance floor burners, which give way to sweet soul steppers, making for a blissful balance on the 9 song album.

The Pendletons is a long-standing boogie-funk and modern soul project of E da Boss (one half of Myron & E) and Trailer Limon. The group emerged with their very first release in 2010, a 7" inch of "Coming Down/Waiting On You" on the Slept On record label, which set the tone for the group to emerge... It instantly became a cult classic receiving constant play at nights like Sweater Funk and Funkmosphere, and fetching for serious sums among collectors.

In 2013, they followed up with another 7" featuring K-Maxx, Jacqueline Mari and Songbird Remos and later a very limited flexi-disc release title "Winning Ova You". In 2016, they released the EP "Gotta Get Out". The title track caught the ear of renowned global tastemaker Gilles Peterson, who liked it enough to release it on his Brownswood Bubblers' compilation. In 2018 the group released the Funk Forever EP on the Bastard Jazz label to critical acclaim.

Now armed with a live band with a full horn section, a vast array of accomplished jazz and funk contributors, and a knack for quality song-writing, the Pendletons' sound has shaped into something fresh and unique. The duo release their debut full length album, 2 Steps Away, on Bastard Jazz this spring.

With their 2013 debut single "Vintage Voudou," Conjunto Papa Upa cemented themselves as the torchbearers of a rare breed of Afro-Caribbean psychedelic soul, a clear delineation from the wonderful world of Venezuelan poly rhythms. That original song, named after the short lived but heavily influential Amsterdam brick and mortar record shop that band leader Alex Figueira founded, was a perfect clue into the deep exploration that Papa Upa would begin to take on their musical journey. Like the store itself, known for its solid connection to the musical footprints put down in relatively undiscovered places like Suriname, Curacao, Cabo Verde, Portugal and of course Figueira's native Venezuela, Papa Upa has captured a sound that is entirely unique, a new concoction of influences that at once sound strange, yet totally familiar. Perhaps because Venezuela shared such a rich & diverse mix of sounds from the Atlantic, Caribbean & US, a kindred spirit to their neighboring country, Colombia, an equal in terms of their industry output from the 60's & 70's, yet not nearly as publicized and compiled in recent years. Like many places in the greater Afro-Caribbean nexus, they were musically ahead of their time.


This futuristic mélange of sounds is reflective of Papa Upa itself, made up of musicians from Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba & The Netherlands, all living, practicing & recording at Figueira's Amsterdam studio, Barracão Sound. With such a wide range of tropical influences, in a cosmopolitan and diverse city like Amsterdam, it's no wonder that Papa Upa's first extended project would find kinship in a collaboration with New York's Names You Can Trust.


Their lead single for the label, a preview of an upcoming full-length project in 2020, features "El Secreto Del Metalero" & the 45-only bonus B-side, "Chicharrón Pelúo." Metalero, or "The Metalhead's Secret" is a fitting anecdote for Papa Upa, with Figueira's synthesized vocals leading the way. It's an allegorical exorcism of a debauched headbanger on a discreet dance floor of a tropical rave. The shedding of a gruff & gothic exterior for the buckle-to-buckle bliss of the changa. Similarly in the music itself, under the cloak of vintage synths and a woofer exploding bassline, lies a frenetic fusion of afro-latin percussion that is highlighted by the intense rhythms of Angola's giantguacharaca (or scraper), thedikanza. At its heart is a sugary sweetness that is capable of converting the roughest of rockers into a tropicalista on the dance floor.

50 years ago, a young Panamanian singer by the name of Ralph Weeks, who a few years prior had cut his teeth in the US music landscape with the group Johnny & The Expressions, self-produced and independently released a record with an absolute monster of a soul ballad called "Something Deep Inside." It was a song that Weeks had come up with on the spot during one of many gigs in the heart of Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, at the time a cultural hub and community for many Panamanians living in the borough. Along with his group, The Telecasters, Weeks often played at a Panamanian-owned club in the neighborhood called 4 Star's (STA4R's) which would independently sponsor the release of the tune on a 7-inch single.

Fast forward to 2019, where a serendipitous meeting between Ralph Weeks and Names You Can Trust turned into a solid formation of musical synchronicity, bonded over a shared belief in musical fusion, a weaving of musical threads that was similarly the foundation of that earlier era in Panama. It's a fusion that has become a constant theme throughout the Names You Can Trust catalog in the last 10 years, connecting the dots from NY, the Caribbean and Latin America. An immediate plan was put into motion: return Weeks to a studio atmosphere that had eluded him in the preceding decades, a vibe and live musical presence that would be reminiscent of his time recording with The Telecasters and The Exciters in Panama.

In the ultimate tribute to Weeks and that foundation, NYCT label mates Combo Lulo unpacked the 50-year old original tune and refashioned it into a timeless rocksteady ballad. It was an opportunity for Weeks to acquaint himself with a new band and a new generation of musical talent. Ultimately, it was an unexpected chance for Weeks to reconnect to the music he wrote one fateful evening in a Brooklyn club. For Combo Lulo, Names You Can Trust, and now the rest of his musical admirers, it's a chance to hear how gracefully Weeks' voice has aged, still silky smooth with those beloved falsetto runs, sweet and rounded like a barrel-aged añejo rum. It's a testament to the timelessness of Weeks' original music, and certainly another reminder of how far and wide even the smallest of musical blips can spread.

Presented as a double-sided bilingual 45 single, both versions of Weeks' classic tune, "Algo Muy Profundo" and "Something Deep Inside," have been formatted in the traditional Jamaican style, skillfully cut live and mixed under the guidance of NYCT and Combo Lulo's talented musicians. It's a tribute to a brilliant record and an unsung architect of Latin American sweet soul, but also a love letter to a very particular NY-Caribbean fusion that theoretically could have happened 50 years ago, depending on the borough you resided in. After all, there was always something deep inside. Comes with NYCT / STA4R'S Company Sleeve & Liner Notes.

“Having moved forwards emotionally from the wilds of dystopian stalking and associated hobbies, Madonnatron have instead been found frolicking through the green pastures of gangsta pimps, Hindu God wars, Cyber Men invasion, loveless nightclub hook-ups, modern Italian Nabokov, and revered screen goddess Elizabeth Taylor. Think of them as post-punk lab rats in the Secrets Of Nimh, feasting dubiously on back-dated episodes of Top Of The Pops. With notorious roaring guitars, chanting vocals and rabid drums they audibly glow in the dark, are strong-armed, and will probably bite you.”

Like their debut, which was released to much acclaim in July 2017, Musica Alla Puttanesca was produced by Liam D. May at Trashmouth Studios.

Their atmospheric, raw, and confrontational live shows carry a sonic force that by turns will make you weep, cross yourselves, and weep again. In the last couple of years, Madonnatron delivered a successful UK headline tour; supported The Moonlandingz,