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A killer set of funky raw soul from the early 70s Norfolk, VA scene – literally Raw Soul – as the excellent group is at the heart and soul of all the material in the set! It features tracks credited to Raw Soul plus singers & groups Lanis Guess, Shirley Johnson, Sir Guy, Josephine Jones, Lee Fields, Page One and others – all heavy burners from the Virginia scene. The tunes are raw, soulful and tightly funky – with the guitar, bass and drums of Barry Saunders, Maurice Glass and Grover Elliot nicely raw and gritty throughout and the excellent sax work of Dorsey Brockington all over the set. It ranges from hard and heavy funk to less frenetic, stilly nicely gritty southern soul. Totally excellent – here's hoping more compilations are coming down the road! Titles include "How You Gonna Do It", "Leave My Beat Alone" and "The Gig" by Raw Soul, "That Beat's Got The Devil In It" by Lenis Guess, "Feels So Good" by Shirley Johnson, "Candy Man" by Josephine Jones, "Wrong Crowd" by Prince George", "Thank Goodness Gotta Good Woman" by Page One and more. CD has 4 bonus tracks: "Conflict" by The Symbolics, "Superman" (alternate vocal take) by Bargara Stant, "We're Gonna Make Love" by Lee Fields and "The Dance Of Love" by 35th Street Gang.

A killer set of funky raw soul from the early 70s Norfolk, VA scene – literally Raw Soul – as the excellent group is at the heart and soul of all the material in the set! It features tracks credited to Raw Soul plus singers & groups Lanis Guess, Shirley Johnson, Sir Guy, Josephine Jones, Lee Fields, Page One and others – all heavy burners from the Virginia scene. The tunes are raw, soulful and tightly funky – with the guitar, bass and drums of Barry Saunders, Maurice Glass and Grover Elliot nicely gritty throughout and the excellent sax work of Dorsey Brockington all over the set. It ranges from hard and heavy funk to less frenetic southern soul. Totally excellent – here's hoping more compilations are coming down the road! Titles include "How You Gonna Do It", "Leave My Beat Alone" and "The Gig" by Raw Soul, "That Beat's Got The Devil In It" by Lenis Guess, "Feels So Good" by Shirley Johnson, "Candy Man" by Josephine Jones, "Wrong Crowd" by Prince George", "Thank Goodness Gotta Good Woman" by Page One and more.

Rare early 70s funky soul! "Stone Spanada" is a stone killer, with a sweet guitar groove and some totally killer conga percussion. The flip "A Taste Of Your Love" is by The Symbolics backed by Shake, with some great drums and 70s synth grooves.

It always feels like we're waiting a long time for a new record from Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – but it's always well worth the wait! This time around, they've found a way to focus their energies even more than before – still sticking strongly in the horn-heavy groove that we love, but also opening things up a bit more on the rhythm tip, too – and going for production that, if anything, makes them sound even more earnest, honest, and spontaneous than before! The record really preserves the live energy that makes the group so compelling – that razor sharp criss-crossing of jazz traditions and styles – steeped in a Chicago legacy that includes Sun Ra and Phil Cohran, but coming across with a hell of a lot more groove than either of them too. Titles include "Touch The Sky", "Kryptonite", "Pluto", "Black Boy", "World Champions", and "Starfighter".

One of the most spiritual albums to come from the young AACM movement in Chicago – a session that's somewhat equal in expression to some of the best post-Coltrane work on Impulse Records! Maurice McIntyre plays here with a sound that's already fully formed – an approach to the tenor that's as searingly human as that of Pharoah Sanders or Albert Ayler – but which is also played with a sharpness at times that recalls a young Marion Brown. The rest of the group is equally well-matched – a tremendous array of talent from the Chicago scene, with Malachi Favors on bass, Thurman Barker and Ajaramu on drums, Leo Smith on trumpet and flugelhorn, John Stubblefield on soprano sax, and Amina Claudine Myers on piano. George Hines vocalizes a bit on a few tracks – singing in a spiritual tone that's somewhat like Leon Thomas, but much freer and more abstract – and the album beautifully balances shorter musical statements with a fuller suite on side two – showing the deeper, more ambitious expressions that were starting to well up in the AACM. Titles include the tremendous "Humility In The Light Of Creator", plus "Hexagon", "Kcab Emoh", "Pluto Calling", "Life Force", and "Suite – Ensemble Fate". CD also features a bonus version of the title track!

Cosmic bedroom funk from The Trash Company – which is actually the solo project of one Max E Monroe – who sounds right at home on Peoples Potential! Max has purportedly been making music since the late 70s, and the spacey synth funk of "Pluto" sounds like it could have been made at any point since! "For The Hook" is even more otherwordly – with a heavy bass groove, shakey beats and thick waves of synths floating over it!

Heady keyboards from Trash Company – an artist who's been making grooves since the late 70s, and who definitely has an ear for a really raw sound! The music's less disco than other PPU reissues – and is mighty dark throughout – with lots of distortion on the beats and keys, and an overall sound that feels like the Italian Cosmic scene collided with early Factory Records! EP features five sweet tracks – including "I Don't Mind", "Having Fun", "For The Hook", "Pluto", and "Bigga Man".

The Ventures are always pretty darn fabulous, but they somehow sound especially nice on this tight little 60s set – a great batch of tunes that really catches them at the crossroads! The guitars here are still mostly in that super-clean style the group pioneered in their earlier years, but they're also playing with the sound a bit more – using some fuzzier touches and some odder echoey bits to abstract the strings even further – showing the tremendous power that could be unlocked on the electric guitar if you only used a bit of simple imagination! Titles include a few well-chosen covers next to some great original numbers – a set list that includes "Tall Cool One", "Scratchin", "The Cruel Sea", "Runnin Wild", "Only The Young", "Journey To The Stars", "Fugitive", and "Walkin With Pluto".

An excellent Sun Ra session from 1959! Ra and the Arkestra are playing in a fine mix of straight jazz and spacey styles, with Ra on electric piano throughout the entire set. A few tracks have some great chanted vocals – and we're not sure if they're sung by one of the Saturn doo wop groups, or by the ensemble – but they give the tracks a great sound, and the whole set has a good late 50's Arkestra sound. With the tracks "Nubia", "Plutonian Nights", "Star Time", and "Watusa".

It always feels like we're waiting a long time for a new record from Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – but it's always well worth the wait! This time around, they've found a way to focus their energies even more than before – still sticking strongly in the horn-heavy groove that we love, but also opening things up a bit more on the rhythm tip, too – and going for production that, if anything, makes them sound even more earnest, honest, and spontaneous than before! The record really preserves the live energy that makes the group so compelling – that razor sharp criss-crossing of jazz traditions and styles – steeped in a Chicago legacy that includes Sun Ra and Phil Cohran, but coming across with a hell of a lot more groove than either of them too. Titles include "Touch The Sky", "Kryptonite", "Pluto", "Black Boy", "World Champions", and "Starfighter".

Hammond beat grooves from The Qualitons – representing funky Budapest! The Qualitons are a unique group in the funky organ underground, regardless of region – drawing from a well of influences that range from rave up funk to wild-eyed vintage R&B & garage rock. It's really exciting stuff, and feels no more or less authentic than the influences – generally with a hard driving undercurrent of heavy drums and thick washes of organ. The strains of beat group and garage rock give it them an incendiary edge that we just love, but they slow it down in spots that show quite a range, and these guys can seriously play! The group is armed with a couple vocal tunes and a bunch of great instrumentals. Titles include "C'mon Baby", "Get Heavy With Me", "Overdose", "Ejjel A Sotetben", "Wandering Will", "AC Blues", "Soul Bowl/Kekfeny", "Aua", "More Plutonium" and more.