Back catalogue:

Review: Two more rare grooves purloined from Cultures Of Soul's Brasileiro Treasure Box Of Funk & Soul and delivered on a sweet 45: Celia's "A Hora E Essa" is a steamy Latin funk workout from 72; all horns, cuicas and soft, honeyed vocals. Franco's "Ei, Voce, Psiu!" takes a more US funk idea with Franco's spoken vocals giving off a strong air of bandleader as the band lock down a tight groove beneath. Watch out for samba flip towards the end. Blink and you'll miss it.

Review: In 2007 Juno Records is ten years old, and we've decided to celebrate by releasing 10 singles throughout the year. Each one is a classic dance track featuring new remixes from the some of the most exciting and established names in the business, including Julien Jabre, Spirit Catcher, Dimitri from Paris, Lindstrom, Troy Pierce, Cobblestone Jazz and many more. These releases will initially only be available from www.juno.co.uk and www.junodownload.com. To launch the series we have pulled out all the stops with the re-release of the timeless "In The Trees" by Faze Action, featuring remixes from the legendary Carl Craig and Jerome Sydenham & Tiger Stripes, as well as the brilliant 1996 original mix. A genuinely huge release, this could be the first of 10 future classics! ***Stop press 19/12/07: the Carl Craig mix has been voted #3 in residentadvisor.net's "Top 5 Remixes Of 2007".

Review: The American female vocal trio First Choice released their rendition of 'Love and Happiness' in 1973. The track is a cover of Al Green's original released just a year earlier in 1972, but First Choice's version was perhaps helped along the way by a peak case of nominative determinism: for us, theirs is the first choice. Featured on their debut album, Armed and Extremely Dangerous, it stood out on the Philly soul girl gang's record as one of the records most propitious to sampling by house and techno musicians, such as Todd Terry and Jungle Brothers. But this time, the legacy of this preceptive soulful-house interplay is honoured by a newly reissued remix by the mysterious but titanic Chicago producer Ron Hardy, whose inclusion on the record is the real star here. Hardy's signature reel-to-reel fuzzes and presence-bled hues effect recollections of a pre-DAW production setup, and the resonances of dub (woodblocks, four-tone hooks, burly basslines) nest the original Al Green vocal nicely.

Review: France's Favorite label dabbles in all things funky and disco-flavoured, and this time they've decided to go with a Brazilian edge on their latest 12". Painel De Controle begins with a Waxist mix of "Relax", a chilled-out boogie monster with sultry vocals, while "Ripa Na Xulipa" by Rabo De Saia is more uplifting and heavy on the disco strings. Finally, Nick The Record rewires "Labirinto" by Famks into a subtly electro-fied boogie nugget. Nice!

Review: For the first in a series of must-have reissues of obscure Brazilian treats, Optimo Music and Selva Discos have joined forces to offer up a new pressing of Fernando Falcao's superb 1981 debut, "Memoria Das Aguas". The eight-track set has long been considered something of a slept-on and hard-to-find classic, with Falcao conjuring up an octet of tracks that brilliantly join the dots between neo-classical movements, dreamy, percussion-led soundscapes (see the sublime "Amanhecer Tabajara (A Alceu Valenca)"), spiraling big band Afro-Brazilian jazz ("Ladeira Dos Inocentes"), intoxicating classical-jazz fusion ("Revoada") and experimental, beat-free sound collages ("Mercado"). In a word: exceptional.

Review: Thanks to an upsurge in interest in zouk, the synthesizer-heavy tropical style that emerged from the French Antilles in the early 1980s, reissues of superb but hard to find gems from the style's original heyday are becoming increasingly popular. This one from Strut Records is a peach. Originally released in 1988, "Las Pale" is the sole album from Feeling Kreyol, a female trio from Guadeloupe assembled and produced by local studio buffs Darius Denon and Frankie Brumier. It remains a brilliantly effervescent and colourful set, with the trio adding strong and attractive to distinctively tropical drum machine rhythms, shimmering synths, kaleidoscopic melodies and jangling guitars. In other words, it's a giddy blast of electronic tropical brilliance. Don't sleep.

Review: By the time he recorded "Brazilian Dorian Dream" in 1976, Brazilian composer, musician, producer and bandleader Manfedo Fest had already worked on countless bossa-nova, samba and jazz albums, both in the United States and his native Brazil. Yet the album, which Far Out has now reissued, is like nothing else he recorded before or after - and not just because it was based on "the principle of the modal diatonic scales of the Dorian mode". Musically, it's deliciously vibrant and colourful, combining elements of his native Brazilian samba and bossa-nova with Azymuth style jazz-funk, American jazz-fusion, and futuristic, then cutting edge synthesizer sounds. Above all, though, the album strikes a near perfect balance between funkiness and the sweet sunniness that defines some of the greatest Brazilian music.

Review: Admirable reissue imprint Comb & Razor Sound continues to unearth, license and re-print lesser-known gems from around the world. Their latest find is Fire Woman, the incredibly rare third album from little-known nine-piece Foundars 15. Interestingly, the album's tracks are not straight-up Afro-funk or Afro-beat workouts. Instead, they various take in Cymande style reggae/soul fusion, psychedelic '60s style pop, wild funk rock/Afrobeat fusion, Hammond-laden torch songs, and skewed Afro-jazz. It's a curious but hugely entertaining hotch-potch of styles that makes for hugely enjoyable listening from start to finish. Highlights include fuzzy, solo-laden closer "Ekele", the anthem-like "Simin Boogie" and Fela Kuti-ish "True Light".