It’s always a pleasure when an album comes along that you weren’t expecting and completely blows you away. It was hip-hop bands like Public Enemy that got me into electronic music and it’s been very interesting over the years to see how things have progressed and gone wider afield. The Recluse Crew are from Helsinki and produce some of the funkiest heavy bassline beats you’ll hear. Perfectly suited lyrics are from Dirty Smarts and LLC. It sounds like these guys have been honing their skills for years and getting tips from the masters. Finnish hip-hop may not have sprung to mind previously but this is heavy weight stuff. I’ll be keeping an eye on Kool Kat in the future.

Simon Harrison

The quartet made up of Hajime Yoshizawa, Masato Nakamura, Kiyoshi Ikeda and Nobuaki Fujii are back on top form with eight more future jazz classics. As Soil and Pimps finally received a well overdue European release, it’s great timing to continue the supply of Japanese jazz. We were given a taster of things to come at the end of 2005 with the Especial 12″ that included “Into The Sun” featuring Bembe Segue and the title track featuring then legend Pharoah Sanders. The beautiful vocalist Yukimi Nagano has also been drafted in on “Afloat”. The formula and sound we know and love continues, with loads more Flute, Piano and Saxophone solos over the baddest jazz percussion in town. Over the following months you should be guaranteed to hear the soon to be massive “Ai-No-Tabi”, assuming you support the right club nights and DJs. All in all, you need this.

Simon Harrison

This formula has been tried on a number of occasions over the years: some albums have produced some classy new interpretations, but, more often than not, remixing jazz classics hasn’t quite come up to scratch. Dopeness Galore have already released the excellent compilation “Timeless Finest Jazz” which gave us a taster from the massive back catalogue of Timeless Records, and now they’ve brought in the remixers. I am glad to say that here are some of the best re-works to date. Domu’s broken beat version of “Nerada” works a treat, as does Alex Attias’ remix of Art Blakey’s Kenji’s Walk, which goes back to his Bel Air Project days. The combination of Mark De Clive-Lowe and Bembe Segue as The Politik was always going to be a winner and I.N.T produce two tracks, one with Rich Medina and the other with Melodee, which will keep the heads happy. I’ll leave you to check out the rest in your own time.

Simon Harrison

Most of you should know MKL from his 3 Generations Walking guise that surfaced on Joe Claussell’s Spiritual Life a few years ago, and he certainly caused a stir with DJs around the world. Lion1music was then launched and continued pushing the soulful deep house vibes. R2 Records have wisely put together a fine selection of sought after tracks and remixes from MKL’s back catalogue on to cd. There were quite a few I missed, so this has been handy for me. Highlights include the 3 Generations Walking remix of Fat Freddy’s Drop “Hope”and Francois Kevorkian’s dub of “Midnight Bustling”, and the other nine tracks are wonderfully produced house flavours.

Simon Harrison

It was well over a year ago that Kirk Degiorgio came to DJ in Leeds and told me about a new project he was working on for Peacefrog which would be in the style of Steely Dan. I’ve been waiting in anticipation ever since and when I received a copy of the brilliant cover of Jan Hammer’s “Don’t You Know” I knew we were going to be in for something special. Kirk’s previous work covers most styles of electronic music and his DJ sets have become legendary. I’m not sure how to describe this style but it’s certainly heavily influenced by Kirk’s soul and jazz history, with beautiful harmonies and strings and stunning vocals by Jinadu, which will blow your mind. Comparisons will be made with Zero 7 but with a backing band of Ian O’Brien on guitar, Chris Witten’s drums and the involvement of The Heritage Orchestra, this has massive mainstream potential and the purists will love it too. So next time you’re watching TV and your mum changes the channel to watch Gardeners’ World, don’t be surprised if you end up singing along to The Beauty Room.

Simon Harrison

The first thing that stands out in the tracklistings for this album is that “Get Live” features Erykah Badu. It’s as good as you would expect and the perfect selling point for those who reside behind record counters. The Strange Fruit Project have been missed in the past and judging by both their previous albums there’s just no explanation. They’ve stuck to their guns and kept their effective sample-based beats and basslines. There is only one slight difference to their previous long players in that they have brought in a few guests: these include Little Brother, Bavu Blakes, Darien Brockington, DeLoach and of course the lady of soul mentioned above. I really hope this gets them the attention they thoroughly deserve, but only time will tell.

Simon Harrison

King Britt has covered most of the musical bases over the years with aliases Sylk 130, Scuba, Oba Funke and Firefly, and now he moves to the dark side- techno. With Carl Craig’s remixes causing a stir around the world at the moment, it’s the perfect time for “Interpretations” to be heard. You get the impression that Britt dug out and listened to all the classic techno tracks, digested the best ideas and then took them into the studio mixing pot to create some beautiful electronica that will keep the heads happy. It’ll be interesting to see what’s next: drum and bass maybe?

Simon Harrison

2006 has been quite a year for debut albums and here’s another from the home of the Rebirth. This is a fine selection of soul, but some people keep referring to it as R&B and Choklate is way past that (-sorry, the word R&B sends me running for miles). Some of you may have heard the single “Waitin” which features the awesome Chali 2na from Jurassic 5, who has one of those voices that I love, and here works a treat with Choklate’s vocals. There is also the lovely “Getting Is Good” and the rare groove influenced “Bigger Than You”, and my personal favourite “Heavy”. You’d be very silly not to check this out.

Simon Harrison

I cannot believe it’s six years since the release of the excellent "To Come", which was a typical example of me purchasing a top dollar Japanese import to see it released a few months later released in Europe for a third of the price: hey, that’s the way it is nowadays. Japanese producer Michiharu Shimoda utilizes the talents of Shawn Lee, Alain Ho and Everton Nelson to create an ace downtempo – electronica – abstract hiphop piece of work. Recorded with a string orchestra conducted by Everton Nelson with haunting vocals from Shawn Lee, this is one album you should take note of. Just because it’s been released in France rather than Japan doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be investigated, so make the effort.

Simon Harrison

This is the first compliation from Manchester’s Phuture Lounge and even though their singles to date have been broken beat influenced, Rainbow Soul Vol.1 features some of the finest soul music that you’ll hear in 2006. You may not recognise any of the artists but I can assure you they are names you need to keep an eye out for in the future. I’ve been lucky enough to have had the Vaceo album sampler for some time and two of my favourite tracks are featured here. There are also two tracks from the amazing Ozlem, two from Fyza who featured on Phuturistix’s single “Fly away”, two from ace vocalist Mr J and two from Michelle Amador. Hopefully you get the idea, it’s bloomin’ fantastic. The four track album sampler will on its way soon.

Simon Harrison