James Blake Assume Form

Spectral pop/R&B/electronic music experiments from the one and only James Blake!

Two awesome uplifting duets from Mr Brown and Miss Collins - including nice cut of This Guys in Love. Unplayed original USA 45

Whilst Celeste’s earlier music was more jazz and soul focused, ‘Not Your Muse’ is much more pop. Her sound is polished and the production on the album is flawless; the album itself sounding like it has come from an international pop star. This comparison is especially stark when compared to the grittier sound of her earlier work, such as her ‘Lately’ EP.

We love this late-period JB. Still on it, funky disco mover!

James Brown, 72

Classic disco party tune. Shake it!

JB tells it like it is 74 - It's bad! Nobody wants to walk everybody wants to fly - You can't get a reservation

Spectral pop/R&B/electronic music experiments from the one and only James Blake!

Louis Vuitton Creative Director, Off-White Founder and DJ, Virgil Abloh, remixes Michael Kiwanuka’s ‘Solid Ground’. Earlier in 2020, Abloh selected ‘Solid Ground’ to introduce his Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2020 Paris Fashion Week Show, and has extended his appreciation of the track with the remix.

Original Nigerian vinyl. Killer.

Original Nigerian Vinyl VG+ (some surface marks plays fine) /Sleeve VG (bit of creasing, pen mark on front and labels)

+High-end Audio Desk Systeme Pro Machine Utrasonic cleaned+
100% Guarantee on this and all Original Vinyl at Sounds Of The Universe - 'if you're not happy we're not happy' or your money back!

SEMINAL disco!

Nice French LP!

Hmmm

UK soul sensation, Micheal Kiwanuka returns with his third studio album, 'KIWANUKA'. Similarly to his 'Love & Hate' album of 2016 this album has been blessed by the production alchemy of the one and only Danger Mouse. A future classic, make no mistake!

The heavyweight minister of funk doing his disco thang - original USA 45

KILLER Early 1973 album from the seminal latin-funk group. Includes "Fencewalk"!

Wicked boogie funk soul disco

Pepe Bradock is back with his first album since 1998's classic, 'Synthèse' - consisting of one track split across two sides with no track-listing. This vinyl-only release is limited to 1000 copies! Sleeve art in keeping with the same theme as Bradock’s past Atavisme 12"s.

Soul Jazz Records’ new Boombox features some of the many innovative underground first-wave of rap records made in New York in the period 1979-82, all released on small, independent, often family-concern record companies, at a time when hip-hop music still remained under the radar.

This first exuberant wave of innocent, upbeat, party on the block rap records were the first to try and create the sounds heard in community centres, block parties and street jams that first took place in the Bronx in the mid-1970s. But where Flash, Kool Herc and Bambaataa were back-spinning, mixing and scratching together now classic breakbeat records like The Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache or Babe Ruth’s The Mexican, these first rap records were all made using live bands, often replaying then current disco tunes, whilst MCs rapped over the top, creating a unique sound that later became known derisively as old school.

And while hip-hop started in the Bronx, rap on vinyl began in Harlem where long-time established rhythm and blues producer-owned record companies such as Joe Robinson’s Enjoy Records, Paul Winley’s Winley Records, Delmar Donnel’s Delmar International and Jack Fatman Taylor’s Rojac and Tayster were the first off the mark to realise the commercial potential of rap music - releasing early ground-breaking records that all quickly followed in the wake of the first rap record, The Sugarhill Gang’s Rappers Delight, a million-selling worldwide hit.

This collection celebrates these first old-school rap records, bringing together rare, classic and obscure tracks released in the early days of rap.

Deluxe double CD-pack comes with slipcase, 40-page outsize perfect-bound booklet, extensive notes, exclusive photography and original label artwork. Triple-vinyl heavyweight vinyl includes full artwork, text and notes as well as free download code.

REVIEWS:

Soul Jazz has a reputation for top-notch compilations that offer crash courses in a variety of styles and genres both beloved and obscure; they are, in essence, the K-Tel of the millennial generation.

This is one of the best Soul Jazz sets in ages, a legitimate party in a box, overflowing with underground deep cuts that have seldom — if ever — been spotted on other collections - FACT

 ROLLING STONE Best Rap Albums of 2016

Rare groove boogie funk.

Unplayed original USA 45

Killer disco party classic from 1975!

NEW LTD. FIRST EDITION 300 copies. Only available EXCLUSIVELY to customers at Soul Jazz Records/Sounds of the Universe.

Stone-cold CLASSIC monster soul anthem! Sounds wicked!

THIS 7-inch can ONLY be bought directly here from Soul Jazz Records or Sounds of the Universe websites and shop.  

See all the EXCLUSIVE 45s titles only available here!

Soul Jazz Records’ new release ‘Soul of A Nation: Jazz is the Teacher, Funk is the Preacher’ is a powerful new collection of radical jazz, street funk and proto-rap made in the era of Black Power (1969-75).

This is the second ‘Soul of A Nation’ album released by Soul Jazz Records to coincide with the exhibition ‘Soul of a Nation – Art in the Age of Black Power’, critically acclaimed and enormously successful when it opened at the Tate Modern in London last year (as was Soul Jazz Records’ accompanying first album ‘Soul of A Nation – Afro-Centric Visions in the Age of Black Power 1968-79’). The blockbuster international exhibition is now at the Brooklyn Museum, New York and then travels to Los Angeles in 2019.

This new album features a number of important and ground-breaking African-American artists – The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Don Cherry, Funkadelic, Gil Scott-Heron and more – alongside a host of lesser-known artists all of whom in the early 1970s were exploring new Afrocentric poly-rhythmical styles of music – radical jazz, street funk and proto-rap – while at the same time exploring the Black Power and civil-rights inspired notions of self-definition, self-respect and self-empowerment in their own lives.

During this era African-American jazz musicians ripped up traditional definitions – rejecting the term ‘entertainer’ to redefine themselves instead as ‘artists’. They worked outside of the mainstream music industry perceiving this artistic relationship to be fundamentally exploitative and politically flawed. Artists instead formed their own pan-arts community-centric collectives, set up their own record labels, ran concerts in alternative performance spaces – art galleries, parks, lofts, community centres – all as a way of taking control of their own creative destinies.

At the start of 1960s jazz musicians had embarked on an intense period of musical experimentation as artists John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry sought to dismantle the traditional definitions of jazz by creating new music that broke free from its establishment shackles. By the end of the 1960s, forward-thinking African-American jazz musicians had absorbed the ideas of this radical and avant-garde path but also began to introduce many new elements – not just civil rights concepts of freedom but also black power ideas of self-respect, righteousness and anger.

Their music developed into a radical and intense Afrocentric mix of jazz, funk, soul and street poetry, all in search of a new musical language that could better represent artistic African-American cultural expression.

All of the featured artists here were involved in this search in different ways; A shared sense of Afrocentric collectivism joined the dots between the deep avant-garde experimentalism of The Art Ensemble of Chicago (here featuring soul singer Fontella Bass singing the powerful ‘Theme de Yoyo’) to the hyper funk psychedelia of George Clinton’s Funkadelic.

The poetry of Gil Scott-Heron and Sarah Webster Fabio performed with a backdrop of street funk and heavyweight percussion laid down the template for the birth of rap. The Har-You Percussion Group, a group of young Harlem teenagers, showed how government-sponsored social initiatives helped create great art and music. Gary Bartz and The Oneness of Juju offer spirituality and cosmology. Collectives like The Pharaohs and Detroit’s Tribe add deep jazz and street funk in equal measures. And so on.

Influenced and radicalised by Black Power and civil rights, all these artists were involved in creating – in the words of the Art Ensemble of Chicago – ‘Great Black Music: Ancient to Future.’

This album is available as heavyweight triple vinyl (+free download), full and extensive text, exclusive photography, with house inners, and as deluxe CD with slipcase, 40-page outsize booklet and jewel case.

Brand new edition of Soul Jazz Records’ Brasil album recorded in Rio de Janeiro in 1994 with a host of legendary Brazilian musicians including Sivuca, Raul de Souza and singer Joyce Moreno – which has remained one of the key defining early releases from the record label. Out-of-print for over 20 years (!!!) the album has now been fully digitally re-mastered for this new 2018 edition.

The album was recorded at the height of the first wave of interest in Brazilian music in London in the 1990s. Joyce and a group led by husband drummer Tutty Moreno had just been brought to the UK for the first time ever by Gilles Peterson and Brazilian music obsessive Joe Davis (and future head of Far Out Records) and performing to over 2,000 new young fans.

Singer-songwriter Joyce has been a living legend in her native Brazil ever since the Bossa Nova movement of the 1960s and had made her first record when she was just 20, and described by Antonio Carlos Jobim as ‘one of the greatest singers of all time.’

Joyce Moreno agreed to be involved in the project to record an album in Brazil produced with a UK sensibility and Tutty Moreno’s group signed up as the house-band for the project. Stuart Baker (founder of Soul Jazz Records) and Joe Davis then flew to Rio de Janeiro, searching out studios and rehearsal spaces.

During this time in Brazil more artists signed up for the project including legendary figureheads of the Brazilian music Sivuca (who brought his own group) and trombonist Raul de Souza. Other key figures included singer/guitarist Celia Vaz who worked extensively as arranger with the legendary Quarteto Em Cy and drummer Dom Um Romao); Wanda Sá, who played in Sergio Mendes’ original seminal bossa nova group Brasil 65 (during which time she married the artist Edu Lobo); and legendary saxophone/flautist Teco Cardoso whose bio reads like a who’s who of Brazilian music and includes work with Edu Lobo, Dori Caymmi, Baden Powell, Joao Donato, Carlos Lyra and others.

The final piece to this Brazilian jigsaw was the addition of percussionist Pirulito – whose stunning display of self-made instruments allowed him to magically create the massive sound of Rio’s Samba Schools live inside the studio. The album was recorded over one hot summer, mixed in London and then released at the end of 1994.

Over 20 years on and Soul Jazz records’ Brasil album manages to capture both an important cross-cultural musical moment in time between Brazil and London while at the same time sounding as fresh as if it was recorded today! Following the original success of this album Soul Jazz Records’ continued its love affair with Brazil and went on to release a host of Brazilian albums including classics such as Tropicalia, Brazil 70, Bossa Nova, a Bossa Nova cover art deluxe book with Gilles Peterson and releases by Sergio Mendes, Baden Powell, Edu Lobo and more

This new edition album is released with full original artwork and now comes as limited edition remastered vinyl edition (+ free download), limited edition Japanese heavy card CD edition and digital album.

Classic debut album from the Canadian indie rock band.