Charles Bradley
Black Velvet

Moscow funk band The Diasonics already teamed this album with super lead 7" single 'Gurami' and the arrival of the full length itself doesn't disappoint. The band draw on a pallet of Soviet era psychedelia, deep funk, and instrumental hip-hop to serve up their sounds and work them into always cinematic and widescreen tunes. Every tune hits hard, with 'Ink' driven by a knotted bassline and shimmering and mystic lead guitar, 'Salmanazar' offer a more roomy and laidback vibe filled with wah wah guitar and 'Spiders' getting a little more prickly and uneasy. The whole thing is mesmeric from start to finish and is packed with proudly Eastern European flavours.

The Sonor Music Editions label is serving up a welcome reissue of the soundtrack of the cult Italian cult movie Emanuelle in America. It comes in super limited quantities with just 500 vinyl copies pressed and the whole thing has been remastered for the occasion. The sex thriller movie was directed by the legendary Joe D'Amato and its music was overseen by Nico Fidenco. Fittingly, the sounds are super libidinous, sexy and seductive, with sultry strings and 70s porno vibes never too far away. This one is for adults only, for sure.

Hozan Yamamoto here at Mr Bongo! A legend of Japanese jazz, he is rightly regarded as a true master and was recognised as a "living national treasure" by the Japanese government in 2002. Over five decades he pushed the genre into new directions, absorbing fusion, funk, spiritual jazz and many other sounds, resulting in a discography studded with gems of rare beauty. Exploring his back catalogue has taken us on an engrossing journey that now sees us reissuing another work from this ground-breaking musician.

Detroit's finest Javonntte pulls out all the stops w his debut album, an exploration into the jazz fusion sounds forged in the Motor City.Javonntte toured w the late Aretha Franklin, and this album presents his first exploration into jazz and soul sounds forged by the late the queen of soul. An emotive and personal record which was recorded entirely in Detroit, the influence of the Motor City can be heard transcending through each track.Dripping with jazz, soul and funk, the album is a testament to Javonntte's mastery of both keyboard and bass with additional vocals provided by the man himself.

As the final chapter in the initial run of Jazz Is Dead releases, Remixes JID010 continues the creative catharsis of an exhilarating new chapter in jazz music. Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad tapped nine iconic creators to reimagine their personal favorites from Jazz Is Dead’s catalogue to-date, who created striking new versions of songs by Marcos Valle, Roy Ayers, Gary Bartz, Azymuth, João Donato, Doug Carn, Brian Jackson and The Midnight Hour. Holding the line taut like a bass string, Younge & Muhammad only invited those special musical alchemists who have previously participated in Jazz Is Dead happenings, or those who are slated to share that stage soon: Cut Chemist, DJ Spinna, Georgie Anne Muldrow, Akili, Shigeto, Pink Siiffu, Dibiase, Natureboy Flako, and Kaidi Tathum. It’s a family affair.The album blasts off with Kaidi Tathum’s reinvention of Marcos Valle’s wistful beachside stroll, transforming “Gotta Love Again” into a strutting, pulsating excursion equally at home in the club and headphones. Building off of Valle’s mellifluous vocalizations, Tathum harnesses the composition’s polyrhythms to build a soulful, jazz-house track that floats over ethereal synths and stutter-steps to a propulsive beat entirely unimaginable, yet true to the spirit of the optimistic and effortless original.On his remix of Gary Bartz’s “Soulsea” Cut Chemist taps into the big-beat atmospherics of his old running partner, DJ Shadow, to craft a moody, echo-laden, percussive down-tempo saxophone meditation. Creating drama over bombastic beats, Cut Chemist layers Bartz’s searching sax refrains over sparse keyboard bars. Brian Jackson’s mellow masterpiece dedicated to the recently departed jazz vocalist, “Nancy Wilson”, receives an epic overhaul by producer Shigeto with help from harpist Ahya Simone and DJ Dez Andres. More than tripling the original’s duration while adding layers of new sounds, Shigeto’s remix weaves in and out of movements that alternately showcase Jackson’s soulful flute work, Simone’s sparkling harp and Andres’ bubbling percussion. Imagine if Dorthy Ashby and Hermeto Pascoal dropped in on Miles’ In A Silent Way sessions...It might have been a foregone conclusion that Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad would give their Jazz Is Dead series the remix treatment, but that doesn’t mean this is your average remix album. Just like Younge and Muhammad fused their aesthetic with the musical masters they invited to collaborate with for Jazz Is Dead, the DJs, producers and musicians tasked with remixing songs from the catalogue tapped into the same jazz ethos, resulting in imaginative and sometimes radically reimagined versions of the originals.