With their trippy languidly soulful third album Colombian band (albeit now based in Chicago in the US) Divino Niño have us hooked. Whether lyrically dealing with joyful love, or the loss of, it’s all wrapped in woozy dreamy guitars combined with sweet psychedelic touches and the wonderfully laid back vocals to produce a beautiful album for lovers and dreamers everywhere.

If you love Homeshake, Mild High Club and Mac Demarco you may have just found your new favourite band and record of the summer.

I do love bands and musicians who can surprise you and this certainly does. Having been a relatively recent convert to Tenderlonious and 22a in general but this release blew away any preconceived ideas about either.

Having heard that Tenderlonious had recorded some drum and bass tracks in the past so it wasn’t so much of a shock but it’s still a departure from his previous work and position as one of the leading lights of the UK contemporary jazz scene. This is a techno / house album with nods to the spiritual homes of both Detroit and Chicago and it’s pioneers like Larry Heard, Carl Craig and Juan Atkins.

It retains the warmth, humanity and soul of it’s peers work and also Tenderlonious’s while pushing the boundaries of what the UK jazz scene is capable of achieving. An astonishing album on many levels.

Available here https://pebblerecords.co.uk/product/tenderlonious-hard-rain-22a-lp/

Mndsgn aka Ringgo Ancheta is a prolific beat maker, producer, radio host and label owner from San Diego. Snaxx is the second of two albums of unreleased tracks he wanted to release before his next studio album.

Snax (one x ) came out last year and now we have Snaxx (two x’s) and wow if this is the stuff that’s going unreleased then what else must he be doing! I love Mndsgn’s music as he takes you in one direction then another from the woozy psychedelics of his first ep Yawn Zen (which can seriously trip you out) to the last full album Body Wash on which he repurposed influences from 1970s and 1980s boogie and R&B into a conceptual cosmic epic.

On Snaxx he goes back to beat making and produces a stunning album of wonky basslines, languid dreamy beats but with a sense of meaning and purpose. Add some perfectly used guests Jon Bap, Asal Hazel and Pink Siifu and with each track pretty much below three minutes and you have not only the perfect soundtrack to summer but an album that can almost seem to alter time as you enter it’s almost ambient dreamlike world.

Pure Pleasure have been on fire recently with a string of outstanding jazz reissues from labels such as Strata East and Tribe and that rich vein of form now continues with a welcome reissue of Weldon Irvine’s Liberated Brother.

This was Weldon Irvine’s debut as a headliner on his own label Nodlew (Weldon backwards). He had previously been in Kenny Dorham and Joe Henderson’s big band before signing on with Nina Simone as the legendary singer’s organist, bandleader, arranger, and road manager. It was during this time and at Simone’s request he wrote ‘Young Gifted And Black’ after two weeks of writers block the words came to him in a moment of inspiration.

After splitting from Simone he set out on his own releasing Liberated Brother in 1972 and the follow up Time Capsule in 1973 truly finding his own voice with his unique fusion of jazz, funk, soul, blues, and gospel and combined with his social consciousness and spirituality created a timeless sound.

After the 1979 album Sisters it would another 15 years till he would release an album as leader again but in the intervening years he would be rediscovered and embraced by politically minded rappers such as Boogie Down Productions, A Tribe Called Quest and Leaders Of The New School all of whom sampled his work. Unlike some of his contemporaries he embraced this new generation of artists as mentor and guide as well as helping musically artists such as Mos Def, Q-Tip and Common.

Irvine never lost his social conscious and in 1999 called upon Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Q-Tip to record The Price of Freedom, a searing indictment of police brutality inspired by the death of Amadou Diallo, a defenceless African immigrant shot dead by New York cops.

On April 9, 2002, Weldon Irvine committed suicide outside a New York City office complex — he was just 58 years old.

Liberated Brother stands as a testament to an artist at the peak of his art uniting aspects of his life, love of music, spirituality and social consciousness into a truly groundbreaking album

Available here

We’re hooked on this at the moment with it’s nod to classic early American 60’s pop that sounds like you’re driving along the coast to go surfing put through a lo-fi pop blender.

The track Chlorine is a melancholy ballad inspired by Otis Redding and John Waters. Watch it here

Another track from the album is Miss Me and is as SadGirl guitarist/vocalist Misha Lindes explains : “This song is about realizing someone close to you isn’t the person you thought you knew and kind of coming to terms with the fact that they may never share the same values as you. Getting to that point where you decide that it’s no longer worth the effort and it’s better to walk away with what’s important to you still in tact.” 

It’s a tormented love song that transports the listener back to slow dances at a previous generation’s sock hop, only to be subverted by a chorus of “miss me with that bullshit.” 

The good news is there’s a whole album as good and it’s available here…………