I’m very busy at the moment – here’s a quick post while the baby sleeps. Jacob Miller, Alton Ellis, Augustus Pablo and King Tubby team up for a heavyweight excursion into roots reggae from 1979. Both sides of this 12″ feature the vocal tune, a dub and a melodica version.

Straight from Nigeria, it’s Raphael Amarabem and his men – better known as the Peacocks Guitar Band. Raphael started out as a member of the group led by Rex Lawson, and founded his own group in the early seventies. “Abiriwa” is their debut album, and immediately established the band as stars in the wider African region. Their music is a pretty open and  catchy take on the highlife sound, with lyrics sung in both English, Efik, Ewe and Igbo.

I featured the opening track “Eddie Quansah” on a mix I did back in september 2008; it took me another 40 months to track down a copy of the whole album. It was totally worth the wait…. don’t you think?

Have been listening to a digital copy of this dubby disco monster for years now, would like to own this on vinyl, but am not ready to fork over close to a month’s rent… thanks in advance,

C

It’s a latin jazz Tuesday… man. The only solo-album recorded by drummer Antonio (Chocolaté) Diaz Mena is a star-studded affair: Lalo Schifrin, Duke Pearson, Jerome Richardson, Clark Terry, Felipe Yanez, Johnny Coles and a host of others feature on twelve short and fiery tracks. A lot of these are covers – including the first version of “Take Five” I can listen to in years – and the style is a hybrid of big band jazz and a rootsy latin approach. I’ve just realised I’m beginning to sound like a review over at Dusty Groove; time to let the music do the talking.

One of my all-time favorite bossa tunes.

Regular readers of Club Cortez have been able to suss out that I was big on drum ‘n bass between 1995 and 2000 – pretty much my whole record budget was spent trawling various stores for the latest white labels and promos, and the weekends saw me play out in Holland, Belgium, London, Ireland and Egypt alongside people like Matrix, Aphrodite and Dutch DJ’s like Roscoe and Pan (now known as Martyn).

My interest faded when the music took a turn for the uber-masculine: the continuous onslaught of frantic drums, hoover basslines and jittery synths made for an increasingly cold atmosphere, and ladies on the dancefloor became few and far between. Over the last few months I’ve been revisiting tracks and artists I used to love. It’s been a (re)discovery of sorts: some old favorites sound angular and repetitive, while stuff I remembered as lightweight sounded surprisingly fresh. Time + evolving tastes will do that…

While trawling my archives and listening to artists like Boymerang, Adam F, Calibre, Photek and Bill Riley one duo stood  out: Hidden Agenda. The five 12″ singles they released on the Metalheadz label between 1995 and 2003 combine crystal clear production values with a jazzy approach, are melodic and manage to surprise at every turn. I’ve recorded them and zipped them up in a single folder – are you ready to take the plunge?

For the third time in under a year, Michael Kiwanuka has released a great EP. Following “Tell me a tale” and “I’m getting ready“, “Home Again” serves as a taster for his debut album with the same name. That will be released on march 26th – check out the title track in the meantime, and join me in hoping the album will live up to the high expectations.

The second appearance of the new(ish) Popcorn label run by Jazzman – after the storming cuts by Frank Minion we head for the tropical side of things. Ms. Valentino longs to be on an island, while Mr. McKinley gets busy covering the 1948 Arden Clar / Harry Coleman composition “Similau“.

The sassy Barbara Lynn is back for a second visit to Club Cortez, this time with her 1962 debut album. Recorded in the New Orleans studios of Cosimo Matassa when she was just twenty years old, “You’ll lose a good thing” takes influences from blues, early soul and the swampy surroundings and results in an album that’s the perfect antidote to this dreary time of year.