Spinster Sounds

2018

My man Lil Ray posted this on FB last year and it’s been lingering in my brain’s musical archives ever since. Yasmin Williams is a recent NYU grad who, like so many of her generation,  graduated to her instrument from playing Guitar Hero as a youngster. She plays in a specific style called “lap-tapping”, laying it flat, facing upwards, and tapping the strings in a distinctive, percussive style. The result is downright lovely, and I suspect we’re witnessing the beginning of a very cool career. 

Razor-N-Tape

2017

NY Disco kid Jkriv teamed up with the Discovery label’s Free Magic to release an EP on JKriv’s own Razor-n-Tape label in 2018. This tune was pretty left field from their usual stuff, so it definitely caught my ear.  The vocals are lifted from Billie Holiday’s sublime “Travelin’ All Alone” (1937) a cover of the Boswell Sisters original, written by CJ Johnson and first released in 1935

First Word Records

2013

The Motor Is Running - Anybody listening to my mixes for the last few years knows that I’m huge fan of just about anything Tall Black Guy is laying down. I consistency entry discover great tracks that I overlooked on past releases, like this groovy number from 2013’s “8 Miles To Moenart”.

Stones Throw

2019

Cincinnati native Brittney Parks relocated to LA at the age of 17 to change her name to Sudan Archives and pursue her funky mixture of Northeastern Sudanese folk violin and electronic beats. This is a track from her 2018 sophomore EP Sink, where she very calmly and cooly tells suckers to stay out of her flight path. Totally stealing that expression BTW. If you listen real close, you can hear one of my all time favorite Marley Marl beats layered in real low (by the producers, not by me).

Agogo Records

2018

This mix has two tracks by the amazing Seba Kaapstad, a South African group that released a damn near flawless album a few months back that I simply can’t get enough of. It’s new millennium Neo-soul and 90s R&B and the best of melodic Hip Hop all rolled into one very sophisticated soundscape that gives and gives. Again, I urge you, buy this record.

Agogo Records

2020

When I was in Nairobi this past March, I made a pilgrimage to the very famous-among-crate-diggers Jimmy’s Record Shop, that has been serving up wax since the late 80s. I was there for the Benga 45s, as I knew that was the one genre of local music that hadn’t been completely looted by DJs like myself. But I still had to ask, just in case, if there was any kind of Afrobeat vinyl lying around. As luck would have it, the only record they had was something I already had: this Onom Agemo & The Disco Jumpers LP. Like so many Afrobeat bands in 2019, these guys hail not from Nigeria, but from Europe - Berlin, to be precise. Lead by saxophonist Johannes Schleiermacher, these dudes commit heavily to the music of the motherland, while still managing to inject some Krautrock and electronica here and there. I ain’t mad.

Zero Fatigue

2017

I continue to discover tracks on St Louis rapper Smino’s 2017 debut album, BLKSWN. Smino ia Christopher Smith Jr, who is a founder of the Zero fatigue collective with fellow Missouri natives Bari, Monte Booker, Jay2, and Ravyn Lenae. This beat is really bugged out. Almost sounds like a Dj kinda train wrecking two different beats, but yet it somehow works, once you get used to it. This dude is definitely on his own shit, and I haven’t even peeped his follow up album, NOIR, yet.

Tru Thoughts

2014

Just a simple beat from this LA trio’s 2012 “Be Free” LP. It’s so short I had to run it twice, because its over before you even catch the beat. So sweet.

Ropeadope

2019

UK Broken Beat vet Mark De Clive-Lowe has continued to broaden his sound over the last two decades, dipping more and more into straight Jazz and more stuff with live instruments. There can never be too much live instrumentation in electronic music, so I always check out for his new stuff, and I always dig something on them. This came out on his 2019 LP “Heritage II”, and I think the Japanese translates to “future history” (or something like that…).

Stereofox

2021

Just some more groovy downtempo beats that have been kicking around my iTunes for awhile. There’s so much mediocre “chill hop” stuff out there, I usually give it a pass - but this one caught my ear. Maybe yours too.

Sdban Ultra

2021

Berlin 6-piece ensemble Azmari take their love of Dub and Ethio Jazz and Afrobeat and mix it up into something quite lovely. This latest record was recorded in 3 days in a studio in Brussels and released this past May. This is the only straight dub track on there, with most of it being more upbeat and Afrobeat-y. Definitely worth checking out.

AWAL Recordings

2020

Montreal trio Planet Giza are definitely channeling their inner-Outkast circa Aquemini on this joint. Smooth and dark, with some impressive flows and real depth to the lyrics when you lean in and listen. From their “Added Sugar” EP, related in February of this year.

Agogo Records

2021

I am going to shut up about this latest Seba Kaapstad LP, I swear. But really tho, every song is good. My visit to East Africa earlier this year made it abundantly clear that I really need to add South Africa to my short list of exploration destinations. Who’s got the dope Jo’burg AirbNb link?

Chillhop Music

2019

An aptly titled laid back weed candy soundtrack that I listen to when I walk to the subways some days. Gives my neck a little nod to start the morning. BTW micro-dosing weed is the new morning coffee. Axe me how I know. Mecca83 is Evan Jones, a 26 yr old beat junkie from Macclesfield (a podunk town near Manchester) that seems to understand Roy Ayers and Astro Jazz and a lot of schmoove Jazz shit you can hear bubbling underneath these slightly draggy Dilla-esque drums.

Universal Music

2017

Oslo upstart Jason Ogawa is one of those kids that put out a handful of songs on Soundcloud last year and is now doping callabos with clothing brands and playing the main stage at Lollapalloza in South America. What a time to be alive. He makes playful indie pop that is kinda lo-fi and often melodic and doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. It’s like if you locked one of those dorky kids from Stranger Things in a room with a laptop and every half-baked idea from all those cancelled D’angelo albums.

Cotillion

1973

That’s what I said. The Young Holt Unlimited, if in case you somehow don’t know, were a Chicago instrumental group that formed in 1966 from the remnants of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, back in the day when instrumental Jazz Funk bands could have number one hits. They may not have been on George Clinton’s level of Funk, or even The Meters, but they knew what the people wanted, and they delivered it with perfection and style.

Studio One

1969

Speaking of cats who made legendary careers out of being instrumentalists, this is the opening track on Jackie Mittoo’s third album, Macka Fat, released on Coxsone Dodd’s label in 1971. Jackie is a seminal figure in Ska and Rocksteady and his organ work laid to the foundation for just about every variation of post-50s music Jamaica ever produced. I would have liked to have heard him live cuz you know that shit was doooppppeee.

Wild Pitch Records

1991

My man Jules Gayton always knows when to drop this 1987 dub instrumental and keep the party going with one of the simplest and most memorable uses of both the “Impeach The President” drums and James Brown’s “Blues & Pants” sample. Produced by legendary NY producer Paul C, probably best known for Ultramagnetic MCs, touched so many (now) classic records in those days. I don’t know what kind of plate reverb Paul ran this through to get it so dirty and dubby, but you can still drop this in a club 30 years later. Respect.

BBE

2004

Which is to say that this track doesn’t really have a name. Or none that I’m aware of. Madlib put out 7 or 8 of out these “Beaty Konducta” LPs since 2006, and there’s always some untitled gems hidden between the static and the starts and stops and random movie samples. I’m a fan, for real.

Odeon

1965

This was the first track on The Milton Banana Trio’s 1966 Odeon LP, “Balançando Com Milton Banana Trio”. Milton is one of the great Bossa nova drummers, playing extensively with Stan Getz, João Gilberto, João Donato, and Os Cobras, to name a few. He was the original drummer on “The Girl From Ipanama”, so let’s hope he saw a royalty check or two before he passed in 1999. His trio only released about 7 albums between 65-70. This track is also well known as being a Dilla sample on his “Rico Suave Bossa Nova”.

Running Back

2019

A classic track from techno beat maker Move D aka Heidelberg's David Moufang, who released this on his first LP “Kunststoff” back I 1994. I copped it when it was released in 2018 on AVA Records. This dude consistently puts out schmoove house and techno in the Larry Heard vein and it’s pretty much always good. He released a brand new record in June called “Building Bridges” on the excellent AUS label.

Majestic Casual

2017

So much psych-rock is completely off my radar, because there’s only so many hours in the day, nahmean? But I heard this one day in a cafe in Brooklyn and I tracked it down and it’s been putting a smile on my face ever since. Slenderbodies are Aram “Max” Vehuni and Ben Barsochinni, two former UC Santa Cruz students who started creating music together in 2016. I’m pretty sure it’s downright impossible not to like this song just a little…

Future Classic

2017

Hailing from the land of my forefathers, Sydey’s Flight Facilities are Hugo Gruzman and James Lyell, a DJ/Producer duo that has been making waves since about 2009. I like Emma Louise’s push-n-pull flow on this track and I like to imagine she wears cool clothes from the more exotic Australian equivalent of Opening Ceremony.

Stax

1965

This was the title track to Booker T & The MG’s 2nd LP from 1965. Kids today think of Austin Powers when they here music from this era. I just think of that incredible 1991 Stax Box Set that I “borrowed” from a night club I worked at, to record the 9 CDs onto a series of meticulously labeled cassettes. They had every amazing Stax/Volt single on it and those tapes were like a Rosetta Stone to me, putting so much more context on the down South roots of American Soul and Funk than I previously understood.

Yoruba Records

2005

Centaur Jackson released a housed-up Jazz EP in March of this year called “Niggajazz”. Whether or not Centaur Jackson is a band or a person or just another alias of Yoruba label boss Osunlade remains too be seen. It’s not the deepest Jazz record there is, but the modern production and beefed up drums give the songs a bit more oomph than you’ll get from a traditional band.

Stones Throw

2012

I generally steer clear of spoken word, but every now and then, something cuts through and really resonates for me. Karriem Riggins makes wonderful music, and Detroit native Jessica Care Moore put her foot in this. Push your head above that wave.

Saba

1967

Last but not least, I leave you with a wonderful mellow gem from Tony Scott & the Indonesian All Stars. Tony was a clarinetist, band leader, and arranger who was as down as a white Jazz cat could be from about the mid-40s onward. He played with Billie and Sarah and many others in New York’s BeBop heyday. In the early 60s, he caught the zen meditation bug and spent years traveling in Asia, studying eastern philosophy and recording with all kinds of musicians. This cross-cultural pollination became the hallmark of his career, and this tune from 1967’s “Danger Bali” LP is the product of one such fruitful collaboration. Enjoy!