This is a track called “Smack” by Perez Prado from the Contour album “Now”. Note the very weird mangled vocals. Something definitely gained in the translation. I confess to slightly mangling up the video too.
Also floating my gondolier recently is the very wonderful Letta Mbulu – she grew up in Soweto and ended up working in the US with the god-like genius that is David Axelrod, who produced this track:
which is on his album “The Edge” and also on a great comp called “Letta Mbulu sings Free Soul”. Sort of Northern soul with an African tinge…love it.
On a recent trip to Brighton I had a good trawl through some second hand record shops and unearthed a comp from 1995 called The Beat Route on Safe and Sound Recordings, kicking off with a beautiful track from Lorez Alexander, “Baltimore Oriole”:
Once I started searching for this track I immediately found the 4Hero version, which interestingly does away with the D & B breakbeat of the original:
and from there it was a short step to their Life:Styles comp on Harmless which is equally worth a listen.
There’s also the classic Nicos Jaritz percussion work out Otao E Eu
which definitely had an influence on my Studio Don album (see earlier post)…
So as summer tails out and we cross our fingers for a mellow and sunny September I’ve also been back in the lab churning out new tunes with a distinctly hip (trip?) hop, beats-go-orchestral, proggy, library-ey flavour. I have around 30 on the go and will be posting some on Soundcloud very soon.
In the meantime here’s the latest BiggaBush Mixcloud session, not a new mix I’m afraid but some easy-cheesy classics from my carboot faves.
biggabush 