Medina Records

I’ve been uploading a number of my mixes onto Mixcloud. All of these are already available in downloadable form here but if you just want to stream or are part of the Mixcloud community then check them out.

Much of the music I upload onto my blog I also add to my YouTube account and indeed a lot of music I don’t blog ends up there too. In many ways it’s a little simpler and less time consuming uploading music to YouTube and the feedback is better too. So subscribe to my YouTube channel or just keep visiting (the link is always up there on the top right) for a busier experience.

Jamaica Band – Sticky Fingers

Bugs Bunny – The Bunny Hop

Ashton, Gardner, Dyke & Co – Delirium

I first heard this earlier in the year via a mix over at VG+ (cheers Al). Funky big band jazz is something I need to explore a lot more of, there’s something about those punchy horns and that big funk groove that rarely fails to satisfy and this track definitely delivers on both fronts. Featuring a sixteen man horn section (including a Alan Skidmore tenor solo), two drummers, two keyboard players, two bassists; what more could you need?

Oh and if you need tips for similar (I know I do) then here would be a good place to start. Enjoy.

Barone-Burghardt Orchestra – Bumper Thumper

The cash-in on the twentieth anniversary of the Beastie Boys sophomore classic may have happened six months ago but the proper anniversary was last month and what better way to celebrate (a little late), on a gorgeous sunny late August evening, than with Funk Factory’s peerless ‘Rien Ne Va Plus’.

‘Rien Ne Va Plus’ provides the bulk of ‘Car Thief‘, one of the stand out cuts on the album. Huge pieces are flawlessly blended with the Jackson 5’s cover of Funkadelic’s ‘I’ll Bet You’, heavily transformed (the scratch and the transmutation) Trouble Funk bomb-drop synth and cut up tire screech. It’s everything that the lawless late Eighties sampling boom was about and along with the intelligent and humorous lyrics it was, and is, everything made/makes ‘Paul’s Boutique’ great.

I won’t bore you with much of a history of the track other than it was written by Bernard Kafka and originally recorded by his vocal group the Novi Singers. He later formed Funk Factory with Michal Urbaniak (another Polish jazz musician) and they recorded one self-titled album including their impressive updating of ‘Rien Ne Vas Plus’ turning it into a jazz funk classic.

Funk Factory – Rien Ne Va Plus

It took me years to find this album after being introduced to the UK bandleader’s rather excellent version of ‘Light My Fire’ on a ‘Phase 4′ sampler LP. Whilst the tracklist isn’t hugely inspired, the arrangements and playing are spot on with much covered ‘Spinning Wheel’, ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ and the aforementioned ‘Light My Fire’ all hitting the right spots. That said it’s the less likely cover of 5th Dimension’s ‘Don’t Cha Hear Me Calling To Ya’ which really dazzles.

Ted Heath – Don’t Cha Hear Me Calling To Ya

Ted Heath – Spinning Wheel

Apparently an outtake from a session involving Ella Fitzgerald. A studio recording of this is on the R C & B’s ‘Waitaminute‘ LP.