Take Care My Baby

Matthew E. White is back with a new album called 'Fresh Blood'. And he's back on a high soul level again. Smooth songs in the tradition of Isaak Hayes and Barry White (not with his voice - but his spirit). The first track of his latest record could be a classic if it was released 40 years ago. He's got the soul of the ones I named even if he was looking like a mixture of Bob Seger and Greg Allman. It's good old soul music played with a lot of soul inside. Worth to have a listen if you're in this kind of genre.

Matthew E. White - Take Care My Baby

My Baby Don't Understand Me

Some days ago the Cleveland born and meanwhile living in Nashville Natalie Prass released her new album. First I thought, it would be a furthermore a singer/songwriter album with Country loans. When I have listened some of her songs I was surprised that nowadays such a sound is still made. The music is to be described almost with a Big-Band on soul - with flutes, string players, brass players and all what belongs to it so and Natalie's songs with this muggy, syrup-like Swamp feeling equip as if not a young newcomer, but Dusty Springfield or Sandie Shaw stood in the mike. So wisely and points, thus longing and mellow at the same time, this music indulges itself in the everlasting failure of the love. The perfect teamwork between juicy soul Big-Band and her peeping voice makes the charm of the album. When the band starts playing forward, one expects one of these typical thundering voices, but the more the music rises, the more Natalie Press takes itself back. I think her songs will be played often - even at main stations.

Jungle

As normally the big English music magazines make around every new group which contrasts from the mass an unbelievable hype and praise this as the next quite big thing. Most of them are gone before their success started. But sometimes the press has a very good feeling for quiet good bands. And Jungle could be one of these bands I will remember with a smiling heart in the future. It seems like the today kids remember the sound of the 70s/80s when a lot of bands used to play urban soul music that fitted quiet good on the dancefloor. J and T are the protagonists of this debut from England and they give a quite fine electronic sound work from many many different ingredients from the music world of the last 40 years to us here. No matter whether disco, Chill Out, pop, soul or electronic music of all kind, Jungle mix it to a miraculous sound mix which goes immediately to the ear and moves the listener into another world. This sounds sometimes after Chic, sometimes after Bee Gees, sometimes to Pet Shop Boy, sometimes after topical electronic music. For me it's a record I will play a few times this summer.

You can read the full review by Mark Beaumont here.

After the DMCA have arranged that songs I posted by the Secret Sisters offend against existing copyright, I had to extinguish this and I fear that it will also go for me with Jungle. Therefor today only videos. However, does this authority have no notion that everybody to itself on the Internet a converter can download?

Bobby Womack 1944 - 2014

Just got the news that another great great singer/songwriter and musician died. Bobby Womack moved in different kind of genres like pop and rock but he got famous as a vocalist throughout the soul years in the seventies. Younger people may know his song Across 110th street by the opening and closing scene from Quentin Tarantino's movie Jackie Brown. He had a great voice and I think I will check out his legacy again. Though the cause of his death is currently unknown, he had a number of health issues including diabetes, prostate cancer, heart trouble, colon cancer an pneumonia.

RIP, Bobby

You'll Disapear

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A few month ago I already posted some tracks from the New York based musical collective The Phenomenal Handclap Band. In recent days I listened a few times to their first record from 2009. Founded by the two DJs Daniel Collas and Sean Marquand the make an incredible mix of Rock, Disco, Soul, Electronic and Psychedelia. Someone reviewed the album as 65 minutes of slightly spacy live-band psych-disco, Hawkwind jamming with Isaac Hayes with percussion from the Incredible Bongo Band. If that sounds like a party, well, it is a party; you'll want to grab a drink and do your damndest to have a good time. I hear also influences from Sly and the Family Stone and Tom Tom Club.

Enjoy

Phenomenal Handclap Band - You'll Disapear

Phenomenal Handclap Band - 15 to 20