OCTOBER 2015 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the October 2015 issue – OUT NOW!
Milk & Green
No matter how long one spends spinning, enjoying and reading about soul music – we’ve all done a fair amount, I’m sure – there’s always some part of it that somehow slips past un-noticed when you’re not looking. I’m thinking of guys like Lee Fields and Charles Bradley for starters: who knew what long and remarkable adventures they’d embarked upon before hooking up with the Daptone [and related] crew to earn some long overdue recognition and success in this new century?
The same could probably be said for vocalist Toni Green. Born in Memphis back in 1951, she was signed to Hi Records at the same time as Al Green, Ann Peebles and Syl Johnson, toured with Isaac Hayes and Luther Ingram, toured and recorded with Gene ‘Bowlegs’ Miller for a decade-and-a-half, guested on albums by Lanier & Co, J. Blackfoot and The Soul Children, even recorded several albums and singles of her own with such as Quinton Claunch [Soultrax Records] and Mike Haralambos [Good Times]…
Logan Sama
The line-up of DJs commissioned for FabricLive could look intimidating. In its 14-year history, the Farringdon super club’s mix-CD series has included David Rodigan, DJ EZ, Andy C & DJ Hype, Ben UFO and Oneman. But if Brentwood, Essex-based grime DJ Logan Sama felt any pressure to come up with the goods, his FabricLive.83 doesn’t show it.
Where most instalments in the series follow the form of a typical DJ set, Sama’s instead plays like a live grime session of the type most fans would expect to hear on the radio or in a club, save for a handful of releases, not on CD.
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Protoje
Protoje is now a familiar figure in reggae circles with his oversize sunglasses, thick beard and natty dreads. He and the In.Digg.Nation band are a major draw on the reggae festival circuit, along with other new Jamaican roots stars like his good friend Chronixx. The latter invited him on stage to rapturous applause at a packed Brixton Town Hall last year. Protoje has played in the UK since then – most notably at this year’s Boomtown – and will be touring here throughout October, promoting his latest album Ancient Future.
Inspiration for many of the tracks came from a return to the place where he grew up, in the Jamaican parish of St. Elizabeth. “Going back home put me in the frame of mind where I was back in the eighties,” he says on the phone from Paris. “It made me think about what songs I used to hear, sitting outside my house as a youngster.
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Tony Momrelle
Tony Momrelle sure gets around. The morning I last spoke to him, our second conversation for this piece, he was somewhere in downtown Kampala, Uganda, preparing for an appearance on the ninth annual Jazz Safari alongside the likes of Karyn White and Kirk Whalum. A week or so earlier he was in Japan with Incognito for the Blue Note Jazz Festival, a mega event that saw such as Snarky Puppy, Jeff Beck, Pat Metheny, Hiatus Kaiyote, Robert Glasper and others pack out the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse. And a little before that he was in a café in Forest Hill, South-East London where, over latte and an almond biscuit, he was updating me on plans for the release of his solo album, Keep Pushing.
Tony regards it as his first solo album proper. In many ways, he says, it feels like he’s starting from scratch, despite his several years recording and touring with Incognito and Sade [amongst loads of others]….
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