The Next Big Thing

Here's a random selection of new wax you kids out there might enjoy; The Reigning Sound's Live At Goner Records (Goner) beats Telstar's live offering from last year by several miles, esp on the fidelity front. Great tunes and fantastic delivery, here's hopin' for a Greg Cartwright solo country album! Soul Jazz is really churnin' 'em out, the year has hardly started and there's 4 new sets already. The latest duo again stem from the Studio One vaults (v/a - Studio One Soul vol.2 and Sound Dimension - Jamaican Soul Shake vol.1), and good as the music is, it seems that the Soul Jazz compilers have reached a bit of a dead end. Over familiar rhythms and a total lack of "surprise!". From the people who have brought you Las Vegas Grind and Jungle Exotica comes The Lavender Jungle, a compilation of gay-ish exotica supposedly all originating from Hollywood's Senor Charro label. You're bound to see some raised eyebrows when people locate this disc in your collection, but the sounds are top notch, and on a par w/ the stuff on the Jungle & Grind comps. From the same source come two volumes of Barnyard Soul!, two LPs or one CD of greasy, gritty and groovy southern soul stompers. Short on liners (there's none!), but soundwise A-OK!. While checkin' the soundtrack of the Broken Flowers movie, which also includes the Greenhornes and Holly Golightly, I came across this great jazzy tune by Mulatu Astatke, who, on further investigation, turned out to be a Ethiopian keyboard player. I picked up a untitled LP by him on the L'Arome label (LAP005LP). And it's a great blend of traditional Ethiopian music, Jazz and funk from the 70s. One or two cuts don't really cut it, but the rest sure sounds fine. Not sure what it is but all African recordings have this wonderful muffled/dusty sound that might be caused by the fact that the mastertapes have been stored in overly warm conditions, who knows, but it sounds great. Next up is more 70's u-ground from the U.S. of A. Stay tuned...