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Review: Manuel Holcolm has said that he was more involved in the creative process on this tune that he was given credit for on the original label. Either way, the tune was first put out in 1969 and is all about war veterans returning home from Vietnam only to find out their lady hadn't waited for them. It's rough and raw, real and emotional as you would expect, despite the fact that it is all imagined feelings as Holcolm himself never actually served javelin started his career almost a decade earlier in 1961 in the Motown Studios.

Review: Headed up by Benin-born Kaleta - a guitarist who has previously worked with Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade and Lauryn Hill - Super Yamba Band is a New York collective whose decidedly psychedelic fusions of Afrobeat, Highlife and Afro-funk have been getting rave reviews. "Medaho" is their debut album and it more than lives up to the hype. With Kaleta's variously fuzzy, sun-kissed and flash-fried licks to the fore, the band trips its way through nine mostly dancefloor-friendly workouts that wrap heavy funk instrumentation, rousing horns and Afrobeat style organ riffs around polyrhythmic drums that recall the distinctive swing of Tony Allen. It's a stylistic blend that guarantees results, as the sheer volume of highlights triumphantly proves.

Review: Kaleta's first full-length collaboration with the Super Yamba Band, 2019's "Medaho", was something of a slept-on treat: a fiendishly psychedelic Afrobeat affair that was every bit as heavy, colourful and vibrant as you'd expect. Here, one of the album's standout tunes gets the remix treatment courtesy of long-serving, party-starting musical fusionist Bosq. The Ubiquity and Soul Clap stalwart delivers vocal and instrumental passes of "Jibiti", both of which make great use of Kaleta's vocals and Super Yamba Band's fuzzy, Fela Kuti-style horn lines. Bosq's groove is closer in feel to Afro-disco than the original album version, though the bassline, organ stabs and vocals are pure Afrobeat gold.

Review: DJ, producer and edits maestro Oswald Moris spent 2020 focused on library music trawling and editing, following a welcome invitation by some friends to spend time at their home studio. Honing his then penchant for ‘70s and ‘80s library music, Oswald and company took this source as a starting point to jam and record their own personal interpretations of the style. ‘Drug Song’ and ‘Heat Haze’ are two choice selections from these sessions, both coming as notable reinterpretations of the saliently infectious numbers by Belgian library musician Janko Nilovic, who set the tone for library music’s crossover with soul with the album Soul Impressions. For library music heads with an ear for the ongoing evolution of the genre, these covers are welcome diversions.

Review: Japanese gospel-funk-soul outfit Osaka Monaurail are on a determined mission to spread the word of the lord, usually through elaborate and funky orchestral collaborations. This time, on the single 'Do You Really Want To Rescue Me' (the counterpart to another single released at the same time, 'Whole Lot Of Lovin') they once more align themselves with James Brown, who wrote the song in the mid 1960s with Nat Jones and Elsie Mae. Once again, this is a collab with the uniquely expressive Casey Malone, whose unreal vocal talents are lent to the track more as an instrument than just a voice.

Review: Japanese gospel-funk-soul outfit Osaka Monaurail are on a determined mission to spread the word of the lord, usually through elaborate and funky orchestral collaborations. This time, on the single 'Whole Lot Of Lovin', they team up with James Brown collaborator Marva Whitney for a distinctly vocal affair. Straight to the point, hard-driven rhythms and unisonic grooves lend a shocking immediacy to this riveting song.

Review: Osei Korankye hails from Accra, Ghana and is a talented musician known as one of his homeland's last remaining seperewa musiciana. These tracks throw it back to the heyday of the sound in 1970 but were recorded in Brooklyn, NY as well as Accra when Korankye linked up with Super Yamba bandleader and drummer Daniel Yount for a few gigs in New York City in 2017. It was an effortless collaboration that resulted in some super psychedelic funk tunes that are designed for carefree dancing.

Review: Second time around for Kon's fabulous re-rubs of Twilight's slept-on 1986 disco-boogie gem 'You're In Love', which first dropped on seven-inch almost a decade ago. Vinyl copies of the 45 are hard to come by, so this Ubiquity Records re-issue is most welcome. Kon's takes stick closely to the original - these are multi-track tweaks, rather than revolutionary remixes - while subtly beefing up the groove and highlighting the band's weighty synth bassline. On the A-side you'll find the full vocal take - all sweet vocals, crispy disco drums, colourful synths and clipped, Chic style guitar licks - while the flip-side 'Dub' is a marginally more minimalist, groove-focused affair, with delay-laden vocal snippets and swirling instrumental textures echoing across the sound space.

Review: "Huxley's Howl" by Bay-area keyboard savant Howard Wales was originally released as a 7in single in the early '70s on his own Costal Records imprint. Luv N'Haight is proud to present the first official reissue of this classic slice of mid-tempo, instrumental funk, loaded with stabbing horns, explosive Hammond organ and heavy drums with a nice dose of psychedelic vibes to round out it out. The B-side "My Blues" chugs along at a slower pace, with a "bluesier" sound as the title suggests while keeping the same killer psych flavor as the A-side.

Known primarily for his work alongside Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia on their collaborative album "Hooteroll" while also appearing on the Dead's seminal "American Beauty" LP, Howard Wales had already established himself as a talented player during the mid-1960's working and touring with the likes of Ronnie Hawkins, the Four Tops and the Godfather of Soul himself James Brown. A true original and progenitor of the oft-used but mostly maligned "Acid Jazz" genre, Howard Wales paved the way for the psychotropically enhanced excursions of 70s' Jazz, Funk, Soul and fusion.