There’s also a quirky but excellent Dimlite remix which sees him excel yet again. This won’t be released until mid September so in the meantime be sure to check out the mesmerizing video (and free download) which uses some dope Czech animation. Pure heartfelt music and emotion from Ahu yet again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are some more free downloads featuring Ahu:

Sound Species & Ahu – Can We Call It Love

Ahu – I Know All The Bitches (Bullion Remix)

Ah beloved vinyl sleeves! Portuguese crate digger and vinyl lover Joaquim Paulo has teamed up with German publisher Taschen to release – Funk & Soul Covers, a book that will portray over 500 Lp cover sleeves from the likes of Don Blackman, Bootsy Collins, Brass Construction and The Blackbyrds. The book will also boast some great interviews with the likes of Larry Mizell and Daptones Gabriel Roth for example and also feature artists such as Quantic and Andy Smith listing their favorite LP covers and why – Egon from Stones Throw also gets involved! This edition follows on from the success of their Jazz Covers book which was terrific so no doubt this will be of equal par. You can leaf through the book online or purchase a physical copy from this September onwards. Your coffee table needs this! On the topic of covers here’s my own personal favorite. Its of the Terry Callier ‘What Color Is Love’ LP….Whats your favorite LP sleeve??

T

Roy Ayers - Uno Melodic

The label is Uno Melodic Records and was home to some of the most classic productions in the early Jazz Funk and Disco period. Soul Jazz Records have recently been issuing some of the labels rarer releases such as the ‘Ladies of the 80′s’ LP which features the classic ‘Turned Onto You’ and Roy’s own LP  ‘Lots of Love’ which features the much loved track ‘Chicago’ (amongst other dancefloor nuggests).

Another release the label is quite well known for is the classic LP released by Sylvia Striplin entitled ‘Give Me Your Love’ which was entirely produced by Roy himself who seemed to focus his production on female artists around this time and features ‘You Cant Turn Me Away’ a two step classic. Two other female artists included Bobbi Humphrey who put out the essential cut ‘Baby Dont You Know’ and Ethel Beatty who recorded one of our favorite cuts ‘I Know You Care’ which can all be listened to below. A classic label, one master producer, rare releases and timeless pieces of music all make the Uno Melodic label worth mentioning. Check it out!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We are huge fans of Steve Arrington here at ChoiceCuts so we reached out to the man himself to see if he would be interested in talking to us, and answering some short questions we had for him. Steve simply is a legend, a true old school and new school funkster and has recently been recording again. Here’s what he had to tell us.

First of all Steve it’s great to see you releasing music again with your most recent recent release ‘Pure Thang’ as we’re huge fans of yours. How did it feel being back in the studio again after after a brief hiatus?
It was great to be back doing music again, totally inspired.

Steve Arrington 'Pure Thang' 2009 relaease

Your quite involved in the Church and are even a Music Minister, can you tell us a little bit about what this involves?
Church is great. Being a worship leader was great as well, being able to sing and play music to thank God for the gift of life, and his absolute glory is awesome. I’m a musician that follows my heart. I left secular music to pursue spirituality. Now, I’m coming back to secular music to continue to explore my creativity and to spread Love, Peace and Funky Beatz. The “Pure Thang” album, I dropped in 09, is a bridge between both worlds. It’s where I started to feel that I was changing, and a new direction was on the horizon.

The 5 albums you were involved with in the group Slave are considered by many their best period of recording. Do you have fond memories of this period? Any standout moments?
Yes, one standout moment for me in Slave would be the first time I played the groove on “Stellar Fungk” with bass player Mark Adams. I hadn’t been in the group that long and Mark and I were just groovin, and locked in on what would become the “Stellar fungk” pocket. The rest of the band looked around and was like wow, keep that going, that’s smokin. Stellar Fungk was born.The first single off the Concept album. Good, good feeling!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

How did the transition from drummer to lead singer come about in Slave?
We’d done the track to “Just A Touch Of Love”, but the vocals were not done yet. The other vocalist took turns on the mic and Jimmy Douglas, the producer, said that hit record melody wasn’t there yet, and asked me try something. I went to the mic, started in and everyone said, that’s the deal right there. Just  A Touch of Love was born. Wow, Good, good feeling!!! First single and album title.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Any chance of Slave regrouping for a recording, do you still keep in contact with the guys?
Yes, we keep in touch. Who knows what’s in the future.

Can you tell us a little bit about your forthcoming release with Dam Funk on Stones Throw, how did this come about and what are we in store for?
Yes, Dam-Funk hit me up on Facebook and spoke about his love for the funk and my music over the years. He mentioned that I was one of his heroes and he’d love to work with me. He, also, mentioned he was signed to Stones Throw so I could see he was serious. I checked the label and listened to some tracks. I thought, I’m feelin young homie’s funk. The funk was real. Also, I liked his commitment to the genre, and him being a younger brotha and all spoke volumes to me. So, I said cool. We did the first track and it was like, YEAH….Chris Manak head honcho at Stones Throw knew this was seriously working. So, Chris suggested an EP, that then developed into an full blown album to be released on Stones Throw. Dam-Funk is my homie and Stones Throw is my new music family. Funny, how things go. Good, good feeling!!!!

Any other collaborations lined up for the future?
Kickin around a number of things, will let you know when it moves past talking.

Do you have a favorite song or album of all time?
No, I enjoy a lot of music from many genres. It’s all about mood with me. I will say this,
I dig originality.

What are you listening to at present in todays scene… Are there any artists you could recommend us listening to?
I’m vibing on a lot of new and old music, it’s a continuous study. I’m very interested in the new music scenes, all of them. I’m always asking younger people, who and what are you listening to. But at the same time, it’s essential to study the past as well, as together, these are the building blocks for the future. There is so much to learn and appreciate as the music changes from one generation to the next.

Thanks for you time Steve, you are a proper legend…any last words for us?
Younger and older generations have much to learn from each other, throw the egos aside and let’s dance.

Real talk thanks Steve….
Find out more about Steve from the following sites.

http://www.myspace.com/stevearrington1

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Steve-Arrington/105201262279

http://twitter.com/Steve_Arrington

If you like your jazz you may well of heard of this Detroit collective known as Tribe already but if you haven’t then in your in for a treat as Soul Jazz have just released an anthology of their finer moments entitled ‘A Message From The Tribe’ and of course it’s fantastic. This release also coincides with Carl Craig’s produced album ‘Rebirth‘ which features the members of Tribe – Wendell Harrison, Phil Ranelin, Marcus Belgrave and Doug Hammond.

Tribe have influenced a hole lot of producers and especially one of our favorites, J-Dilla in particular. Here’s 2 classic cuts from the LP:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The vinyl now comes as an expanded super-loud double-vinyl and heavyweight gatefold-sleeve (featuring all the extra tracks that never came on the vinyl), complete with limited edition free magazine, full sleeve notes and text. Dont sleep on it. Soul Jazz strike again!

As promised here’s the second and final installment of RZA’s latest art project entitled the W.A.I.L project…Each of the 3 pieces are limited to 360 copies worldwide and are available to buy from Sway and King Tech’s website.

Some have referred to Rza these days as ‘the hip hop hippie’ but love him or hate him, the man is a legend and these prints are an emblem to mark his 20 year dedication and lifetime in the field of Hip Hop

Stay tuned for Q-Berts prints which should be coming soon via the same team at W.A.I.L…….

Jeff Phelps is an artist we’ve been interested in for a while now so it came with great pleasure to hear that Tomlab were to re-issue one of his albums entitled Magnetic Eyes on wax this coming June 2010. It’s also been digitized and available to download here (if you deal in mp3′s only). It’s a great Lp and one that’s been hiding in record shop corners so to speak all these years. We reached out to Jeff recently to find out how he’s been doing and to get a bit more information behind the man the music and this classic album.

First of all its great to see your 1985 album ‘Magnetic Eyes’ getting a re-issue on Tomlab this year. How did this come about, was it largely due to requests from fans?

I’ve always gotten random requests for albums over the years mostly because I still have the same home phone number (land line) that I’ve had since the 1980′s.  Only the area code has changed.  Then with the advent of the internet and email, friends would run across random links to clips from “Magnetic Eyes” and send them to me.  But it wasn’t until I put my own low-tech website together that I began to realize that there was true interest in the LP, and that the interest went beyond the US. I get emails from Italy, Australia, Spain, Germany, and of course, here in the US.  Jan Lankisch of Tomlab actually found me on Facebook (I’m still not sure how he did that) and initiated contact and it wasn’t long before he and Tom Steinle began discussions wth me about a re-issue.

I’ve noticed that original vinyl copies of this album can reach anywhere up to $300 online at present, how many were initially released and was it a success at the time?

There were probably less than 5,000 original copies and we had no idea how to promote or sell them.  It wasn’t really jazz, and it wasn’t really funk, and it certainly wasn’t disco.  Nobody knew what to do with it in the clubs or on the radio at that time.  They didn’t even know what rack to put it on in the stores, but most filed it under “jazz” for lack of a better option.  It was definitely not a commercial success in any sense of the word.  I was pretty stunned to find out that people were bidding on them on eBay and that the prices had gotten that high.  I don’t even know where they got them.  I still have no idea how the album made it overseas – it certainly wasn’t due to any targeted marketing effort on my part.

I’ve come across some of your tracks in various Dj’ mixes down the line but most recently in one of L.A’s up and coming producers named ‘Nite Jewel’. Are you surprised that tracks such as ‘Super Lady’ & ‘On The Corner’ are still finding an audience and filling dance-floors?

Yes I am surprised that people even know about it, quite frankly.  Everyone that heard it back then seemed to like it and enjoy it, but we had no distribution or marketing deal so after a while everyone just went on and did other things.  I met Ramona of Nite Jewel through Jan Lankisch of Tomlab.  Even though we’ve only met via email, we have become friends and she is becoming a great resource to me as I navigate the current interest in “Magnetic Eyes”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can you tell us a little bit about the track ‘On The Corner’ ? It’s about your wife right?

Actually, the words were written by my wife, Paula.  I arranged the music and melodies based on her lyrics.  It has consistently been one of the songs that people refer to when talking about “Magnetic Eyes”, but there are no personal stories behind it.  It’s just a song we came up with at that time.

The track ‘Wrong Space, Wrong Time’ is one of my favorites from the album, it’s taken from a poem of the same name, can you tell us more about that?

Vicki Reece, a former co-worker of mine, is the author of the original poem.  Although I rearranged the words somewhat to fit the song structure I ended up with, there is no question at all that her poem inspired and is the basis for the song.  It certainly went a long way toward allowing me to bring to different feel to the project, and I knew I wanted to use it as soon as I first read it.  I really loved it and thought it was a great poem.

The artwork on ‘Magnetic Eyes’ is pretty special, did you design that yourself or where did the idea come from?

The original artwork was done by a local Houston, Texas artist named Garry Hollie.  It was his concept and it was his drawing.  I really wish I knew where he was these days.  Hopefully, he will turn up if “Magnetic Eyes” grows in popularity this time around.

What have you been doing since the release of the album, are you still making music?

I actually never stopped making music, and you can see what I’ve been working on at my website.  But I got sidetracked somewhat when I joined, and later became leader of, a popular cover band in Houston called The Next Level Band.  We played literally every type of event (weddings, political, corporate, clubs, private parties) for over 10 years, but it was very much a hindrance to creating original music.  As I like to tell people, in the end, I just couldn’t play “Brick House” by the Commodores any longer.

We did manage to put a CD out in 1998, and even though I like much of what we put together, my real regret is that we did too many individual tracks in the studio and not enough of it was played live as a band.  We also relied on drum machines for some tracks and I believe that was misguided.  We really were a great live band; for some reason, all of our parts just “fit” when we played live, perhaps from years of playing together.  As co-producer, I feel like I failed to capture us in our best light.  Then, when we played all the songs live at our release party, I knew I was right.  We, and the songs, sounded fantastic.  Live and learn, I suppose.  My favorite song from that CD was “Don’t You Think I Tried Hard Enough”, and it’s fitting that we used all live instrumentation on it and no drum machines.

In 2002, I worked with one of the former lead singers of The Next Level Band, Domonic Eagleton, to put together a CD.  We called ourselves “Two Souls”, and our CD was called “I Could Be Your Angel”.  I played all the instruments, Domonic wrote words, but it took us a while because most weekends were taken up gigging with The Next Level. We got a nice response to our effort, particularly from the title track, “I Could Be Your Angel”, and “I’ll Stay Forever”.

I’ve also dabbled in gospel (see Phelps Blount Burris on my website, and on MySpace), although my part was just the music.  In all honesty, take away the words and it doesn’t sound much like gospel at all.  It was fun to work the other co-writers, though (Farris Blount, Tasha Burris).

Most recently, I’ve just come out with an all instrumental CD with a group I formed called “Porterfield Rose”. It’s something a little different in a genre I call instrumental pop, and it features Lovancy Ingram on violin, Vedoster Ingram on clarinet, Marcel Miner on bass & guitar, and myself on keys & sax.  Our first CD is called “Echos Of A Rose”.  You can find it on Myspace at  HYPERLINK “http://www.myspace.com/porterfieldrose” www.myspace.com/porterfieldrose, on Facebook (Porterfield Rose fan page), and now on iTunes.

Who are you currently listening to in todays scene?

I always warn people when they get in my car, or attempt to listen to my iPod, that it will be difficult, actually impossible, to predict what song may come next.  I usually have all my long time favorites like Steely Dan, The Crusaders, John Mellencamp, Tupac, Gil Scott-Heron, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kirk Whalum, Third Eye Blind, Lee Ritenour, and Sade mixed in with my own stuff as well as from Nite Jewel.  I’m spending a lot of time working on the 2nd CD for Porterfield Rose as well as preparing for a few live performances this summer so I haven’t listened much beyond my old standbys.  I hear a lot of stuff I really like, but I don’t always know the name of the artist.  I have to get better at that.

What’s next for Jeff Phelps, do you have any albums or projects forthcoming?

As I mentioned above, I’m focused musically 100% on Porterfield Rose at this time.  It’s a fun group and the instrumentation allows us to continue to cross barriers between jazz, pop, and other genres.  I hope readers get a chance to check out what we’ve come up with on our 1st CD, “Echos Of A Rose”.

Thanks for your time Jeff, any last words?

I’d like to thank you, Darren, for taking the time to include me in your blog.  I’d also like to tell aspiring musicians to go with the music you have inside.  Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not good enough or talented enough or that your equipment is inferior or that your music doesn’t fit neatly in a “box”.  Check out my story about “Magnetic Eyes” on my website to see the list of equipment I had at the time.  These days I’ve got all the high-end recording and production toys, but I’m not convinced I’m making better music than I was back then.  It proved that the song is what’s important.  If you are true to your music, it will find an audience whether you realize it or not.  I am living proof.

Real Talk…..

For information and details check Jeffs website http://www.magneticeyesmusic.com/

Here’s the final installment in the Stussy documentary series showcasing Dilla’s time in L.A….

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R.I.P

As promised here is part II of the Dilla Documentary from Stussy….

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……to be continued…..

The excellent PutMeOnIt blog drop their We Love Vol 16, which is a zip file of the best music out there for free on the web. With immpecable taste PMOI and the crew filter through all the weak music out there to pull together another fine compilation of brand new music for your listening pleasure.

Artists featured include: Daedelus, Erykah Badu, Flying Lotus, Miles Bonny, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Joy Orbison, Major Lazer, The Roots & Miguel Atwood Ferguson and many more. Still reading this post eh? get on over there and download quicksmart Rispex to Amelia & Co.