Hello,

How are you feeling? As I write this little covering note, Lewisham is bathing in sunshine and the plants are about to bloom. My dog can roam in the park without his snood and I don’t have to whine (as much) about the daily clean-up, particularly those ears that swipe up all the street gunk like extra-large flannels. Finchy is a loveable rogue but he is work.

The tracksuit bottoms are about to come off – by popular demand – and the light is beginning to charge my cells. You see, this is why the changing seasons are so important. I haven’t managed to submit to the quirks of each one but I do get a buzz from seeing the back of winter! All this is to say that hope is in the air, which is a distant memory to any Tottenham fan.

The plan is to channel some of this extra energy into more spontaneous and frequent writing on here, especially given the dearth of freelance opportunities. In case you missed it, this reflection on Chadwick Boseman’s play Deep Azure was a decent warm-up. As was this trip to The Weight of Being, an exhibition that explores how mental health shapes creative expression. The painter and teacher John Wilson McCracken caught my attention.

I have another story lined up about my local area, gentrification and the importance of holding on to the best of a place.

To the music… Twice in one month? Confusing, I know. This is what happens when you are scheduled to broadcast every fourth Tuesday. What can I say? Take advantage. It’s a double-shot of a show.

I am still defiant in my commitment to making life online a little more genuine and convivial, so please write back with your favourite moments, or to share whatever good news has come your way.

Back at the end of April with a guest 🤞🏾

Want to come on? Message me. I’m very keen to speak to SE London dwellers. The artists, activists, writers, community builders and late bloomers. If you like talking about music, even better.

Stay close…

Amar

*****

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO – Papillon [Universal Music Jazz France]Having completed the last show featuring the tribute to the late great engineer Bob Power, I dug into more of his work and realised that not only had he helped make Peace Beyond Passion with Meshell Ndegeocello, he was also in the studio for jazz excursion The Spirit Music Jamia: The Dance of the Infidel in 2005. ‘Papillon’ features Kenny Garrett on soprano sax and Federico González Peña on keyboards. Spellbinding.

GREGORY UHLMANN – Imprint [International Anthem] 11m 40sAnother month, another selection from Chicago’s International Anthem records, stewards of contemporary, forward-thinking jazz music. You may have encountered Gregory Uhlmann before as co-leader of the fiery SML, who have featured on Moonbeam Levels. Or in a trio with saxophonist Josh Johnson and bassist Sam Wilkes. His solo debut Extra Stars is full of harmonically rich and meditative compositions like ‘Imprint’, with Uhlmann trying to coax unusual sounds from stringed and other instruments. Alabaster Deplume and Anna Butterss are among the guests dropping in.

BY.ALEXANDER – Bloom in Paris (featuring Charles Bukowski) [Blue Note] 14m 25sThe music of By.Alexander, aka Alex Da Kid, passed me by for a minute. Perhaps it was the fashion dimension to the project. But then I started reading all the comments from fans on IG. All that appreciation got me curious, so I paid closer attention. He has a very particular conception of jazz that he’s not afraid to disrupt or agitate through sonic experimentation. Compositions like ‘Bloom in Paris’ (featuring infamous poet Charles Bukowski) access some netherland in the mind. Well, they do for me. The expanded edition of Memories For Sale… is coming in April and his choice of guests says a lot about how wide open he is musically – Theo Coker, Rapsody and JD Reid.

MIKIO MASUDA – Moon Stone [Nippin Columbia Japan] 19m 15sFor his second Nippon Columbia compilation, Tokyo archivist and artist Kunimond Takiguchi turns his attention to jazz funk. Expect to hear the full spectrum, from orchestral and baroque movements to the nighttime frisson of city pop and fusion for the fleet-footed. Names such as Eri Ohno and Jiro Inagaki will be familiar to all you diggers out there. The stargazer in me can’t look past Mikio Masuda’s ‘Moon Stone’, which recalls Lonnie Liston Smith at his most seductive. Out to Portal records for putting me on to lots of Japanese gold via Instagram. Follow them for more like this.

MYSTIC JUNGLE – The Memory (featuring Roxana) [Stix] 24m 00sOff volume six of Disco Reggae, this is Periodica Records founder Mystic Jungle with Roxana doing a cover of Roy Ayers Ubiquity’s classic groove ‘The Memory’ (source LP Vibrations is tremendous, featuring genius Edwin Birdsong and bassist William Allen). I actually wanted to play a new track called ‘Mountain River’ but you’ll have to wait until May for that one to emerge on 7” from a very remote corner of Napoli.

KJADE – Virginia is for the Lovers 28m 20sI always fall for a lackadaisical flow over a thick bass groove, the artist rappin’ about how she “died three times and came back just to write this”. KJade first popped into my world through Spotify’s begrudgingly useful Discover Weekly – ‘Sankofa’ off debut album The Sound That Trees Make. On Everything I Love, she’s in a bit more of a hurry to unload feelings and indulge desires, bluntly stating on ’Virginia is for the Lovers’, “I need you to be all over me”. Oh, FYI KJade wants you to play her music in your local café. “OMG, I love it when people tell me that,” she tweeted last month. You know what to do.

ANNE CLARK – Poem for a Nuclear Romance [Dark Entries] 31m 40sImpending doom never felt so good. Anne Clark was a punk and poet who hooked up with Psychic TV affiliate David Harrow to make two albums: Changing Places in 1983 and Joined Up Writing the following year. From the latter, various versions of ‘Our Darkness’ comprise the bulk of this reissue, and you could imagine the early house and techno pioneers across the pond flipping out over the machine pulse and wanting some of that arpeggiated intensity in their tracks. But ‘Poem for a Nuclear Romance’ speaks to my plaintive heart in this moment.

TIOMBÉ LOCKHART – Strange Things [Mothertongue] 36m 20sLA-based Tiombé has been a name to check for since I discovered her on the PPP album back in the early 2000s and this rare song produced by Bilal, which you can find on her unofficial debut album, The Aquarius Years. She always glides and tip-toes gracefully over heavy beats and this dub rhythm, courtesy of frequent collaborator Georgia Ann Muldrow, is no exception. Coming Forth By Day came out last year and deserves wider attention.

VIRGO – The Art Roots [Mukatsuku] 40m 00sNick Weston from Mukatsuku Records has collected four classic ambient techno tracks from Form@ records on one 12” for your pleasure. I adore music like this at the moment. It calms my mind and helps me to find a flow state. Virgo is the alias of Yasutaka Sato, who adopted the moniker from 1996 to 2004 before shelving it for 20 years. With its icicle melody and robotic oscillations, ‘The Art Roots’ creates a strange yet addictive sensation. For more ambient experimental business out of Japan, listen to this NTS Special on Japan’s CD-era electronic underground.

SHY ONE – Nort Wess [Touching Bass] 44m 15sShy’s new album is rightly getting lots of attention for its adept fusion of great Black British music from the past few decades, from soundsystem and street soul to grimey, UK funky and broken. I still remember getting very excited about early tunes such as ‘Waterfalls’ but if you look on Bandcamp, you’ll find unreleased material from as far back as 2010 (see below). It’s not easy to make a project feel this cohesive, particularly with such a wide array of guests dropping in (George Riley, Steve Spacek, James Massiah). But Mali is just that. Bass, Mids, Tops co-author Joe Muggs traced the roots of this record really well in his piece about lineages of sound.

SHY ONE – Cardiophobia 47m 40sA precocious offering from a collection of previously unreleased beats and bleeps made between 2010 and 2011.

2562 – Stranger Than Paradise [Tectonic] 51m 25sDave Huismans (aka 2562) was one of the names I would check for regularly at the dawn of what became known as bass music around 2006-7. His releases on Tectonic quietly helped to inform the sonic architecture of this nebulous and ephemeral sound, a mutation of dubstep and techno among other influences. This scurrying monster is on an EP of previously unreleased music from that period, which Dave discovered on an old studio PC.

SECOND STOREY – Viper Returns [Frustrated Funk] 56m 30sOff the Descend to Ascend 12 by Berlin-based UK producer Alec Storey, this is reminiscent of that golden period of Hessle Audio releases in the early 2010s. Made to fry bassbins.

JULION DE’ANGELO – NOWnormal [Mother Tongue] 1h 01m 00sJulion’s been steadily building a rep for punchy and raw productions like ‘NOWnormal’ from his debut EP, as well as dynamite edits like this. There aren’t enough percussive trax out there these days, or afro dubs in the vein of classic MAW. The kind that DJs could use to work the crowd over with, before reeling us in with an irresistible vocal.

KEVAN ADRIAN – Give It Up (Grusane Dub) [Rush Hour] 1h 08m 10sThere’s a great story behind this joyous floorfiller, made by Nigerian-born Kevan Frost while working as a session man in 90’s London. In place of pay, he would be given free time to record and the self-taught musician knocked out ‘Give It Up’ in just two days using C-Lab on his old Atari, the Akai S-1000 sampler and a few instruments. Decades later, a friend of Chicago DJ Mark Grusane found a copy in the Africa Record Centre in Brooklyn and handed it to him. Mark recognised its magic and added his touch on two road-tested versions.

THOSE GUYS – Tonite (Coloured Girls Mix) [MCA] 1h 13m 20sFinally, this classic Basement Boys production from 1991 is getting a reissue. You won’t find many more boomin’ house records that play with time as boldly. ‘Tonite’ is so well constructed, from girls’ chitchat about givin’ it up in a Buick and doin’ it in the dark, to the intoxicating piano-led middle section – lights down low, sweat drippin’ off the walls of Shelter or Zanzibar – into that sensual drop-down where everyone can feel just a little bit sexier.

K-HAND – On a Journey [Acacia] 1h 22m 05sOut to my old Straight No Chaser colleague Andy Thomas for puttin’ plenty respect on the names of Detroit’s house/techno queens in his Bandcamp article. Among them, Kelli Hand was someone I’ve looked up to for many years for her staunch independence (Acacia was her label, started in 1990) and work ethic. Gone too soon. It felt right to put a little K-Hand in the air so let’s go straight to my favourite from her debut album. Jungle pressure by way of Innerzone Orchestra. As deep and heavy as anything ever released “from a well-known place” as Kelli put it, regardless of gender. Don’t ignore The Art of Music, though, particularly ‘Messenger’ and ‘2 Low Key (12-inch mix)’ off Fantasy. Mixmag gave us their top 20 a while back, which collates her signature swing and how she could move your body in all types of ways.

XYLITOL – Falling [Planet Mu] 1h 26m 10sTaken from Catherine Backhouse’s second album on Planet Mu as Xylitol, ‘Falling’ brings the propulsive force of jungle together with the Kosmische drift and Mitteleuropean melancholy of influences such as minimal synth composer Miaux. It was the Sarajevo-born Belgian musician’s directness and lightness of touch that Backhouse felt a deep kinship with on this project. A paradox she sought to emulate on Blumenfantasie. Mission accomplished.

URBAN JUNGLE – Back in the Days (Sexy Ladys Mix) [Jungle Mania] 1h 32m 05sI was having a jungle Sunday, as you do, and this one bubbled up to the surface. Originally made as a dubplate for the ravers in 1994 by a young Mark Ryder, using a vocal sample from Lil Louis’ ‘The Luv U Wanted’, this is the definition of a roller.

FREEDOM – Can’t You See [Miles Away] 1h 38m 35sUplifting soul boogie bangers like ‘Can’t You See’ are truly priceless. Made by a group who met at Jackson State University in 1975, their 1977 debut single has a killer arrangement and may have been inspired by The Emotions. They would go on to wow crowds across the American South and record four albums on Malaco records.

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