UK

The Haggis Horns will release their fourth studio album in September 2017 and as a little teaser, they drop a summer single worldwide on June 9th via their own Haggis Records, a feel good bouncing hip-hop/funk jam featuring guest UK MC/rapper Doc Brown. Think back to the dawn of hip-hop in the early 1980s when the first rap singles featured the Sugarhill Records house band laying down heavy funk grooves for MCs like The Furious Five and Treacherous 3 and you get the flavour. No-nonsense party hip-hop/funk for b-boys, soul sisters and funk brothers! And keeping with that old school flavour, it will come with a limited edition 7" vinyl pressing alongside the digital single and feature an instrumental version on the b-side with the Horns cutting loose on the solos.Now in their 19th year, The Haggis Horns are still as popular and busy as ever playing clubs and festivals around the UK and internationally and finishing this new album for autumn release. Expect another slab of heavy funk and sweet soul with longtime vocalists John McCallum (Corinne Bailey Rae band) and Lucinda Slim on various featured tracks plus the hip-hop collaborations with Doc Brown. As always, their famous super tight rhythm section holds it down alongside one of the UK's best horn sections of the last 2 decades whose gig/recording credits include Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse, Jamiroquai, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas and Lily Allen.

The sonic partnership of K15 and Emeson originated in the days of MySpace. A future of combining their skills was inevitable, and now in 2017, it's time to unleash their debut studio album into the ether.The solo-projects of Tottenham-raised Kieron Ifill (aka K15) date back a decade, but were truly kick-started on labels such as Kyle Hall's Wild Oats and WotNot Music, with a number of genre-crossing releases dropping ever since, including the WU15 project (along with Yussef Kamaal's Henry Wu, on Eglo Records). Additionally to his production work, he has established himself internationally as a DJ, from the Jazz Cafe to the CoOp parties.Partner in Profusion, Emeson, has many skills to his bow - singing, songwriting, producing, promoting, DJing (under the alias Ed Nice) and acting. As a musician, his varied skill-set has seen him work with Chico Hamilton, Carla Duke, Karmasound, Uzo Madu and Chris Jerome. A frontman for soul-jazz groups LifeSize, The One and Saturn's Children, he has featured on releases for BBE and Tokyo Dawn, and appeared live on stage at the likes of Ronnie Scott's.The debut single was supported by tastemaker blogs Wonderland, XLR8R and Stamp The Wax, has been bumped by selectors such as Lefto and Jazzie B, and played on NTS, Worldwide FM, Mi-Soul, LeMellotron, Balamii Radio, Itch FM, Invader FM, Soho Radio and various stations across Europe and the US.This album is full to the brim with summery sun-soaked synths, drifting across the warmest of basslines and heavyweight beats. Emeson's rich vocals gracefully ride atop of K15's delectably bruk twist on neo-soul sonics and electronics; this is some seriously classy contemporary London soul music, that manages to incorporate flashes of various dance music techniques, sound-system etiquette and jazz-tinged rhythms. As future-thinking as it is subtly retrospective, it doesn't lend itself to one genre, it intentionally embodies the best of many. An array of everything that is great about British black music in 2017. The message the album conveys itself couldn't have come at a more poignant time. Where do we begin?Profusion - an abundance of something rich indeed.

London soulful house label Makin' Moves (brought to you by Matt Langrish-Smith & DJ Jamesey) bring the heat once again with these awesome remixes of The Foreign Exchange: an internet-spawned collaboration between Dutch producer Nicolay and US rapper/singer Phonte Coleman from Little Brother. "Body" is taken from their recent album Tales From The Land Of Milk & Honey and it is a wonderful slice of modern soul that calls to mind the work of Kaidi Tatham or Vikter Duplaix. The remixes on here work that extra bit of magic though and who better than NYC's finest DJ Spinna to deliver the goods on his deep and emotive remix. His second offering, the "Ride It Out dub" dives even deeper and does exactly what it says on the tin on this version, aimed squarely at late night dancefloors.

Following a 12" from Shedbug, Flux Records rolls around for a second helping with assistance from rising French producer Laroze. The young artist wears his influences on his sleeve, channeling the spirit of all eras of the Motor City into his soul-soaked tracks, not least on first track "Good Inside." "Loin Des Yeux" is a more contemporary house jam with woozy pads and samples aplenty from the Think break upwards. "Acid Devotion" meanwhile takes a break from Detroit to whip up a 303-laced storm, and then Andres comes on board to drop some authentic Midwestern charm over "Loin Des Yeux".

As Emotional Rescue continues to deliver the goods for those who love discofied rarities from the 70s and 80s, here comes this EP from Kevin Harrison, originally released in 1982 and worth a pretty penny second hand. It's a wistful, proggy kind of groove that finds Harrison's voice lost in an alien phaser while the live band feel gels with synthesiser parts for a fluid kind of cosmic goodness. There's simply no arguing with the plush melodic wonderment of "Views Of The Rhine", while "Fly" is the jam the party DJs will reach for, not least for its slinky bassline. Amazing.

With just one 7" release to their name in the form of the 1981 release, Jive Baby On A Saturday Night, the cult of The Jellies was possibly accidentally assured with the long lost song being rediscovered by collectors and championed by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore no less. Picked up and reissued by the stellar Trunk Records in 2010, the B-side cut, however, was sadly overlooked. Now Emotional Rescue are proud to license The Conversation and remaster it especially for this rerelease. Based around a simple drum and bass rhythm, interspersed with crowd noise, playful female vocal yelps and sprinkled with dub effects thrown in to the mix and you wouldn't probably think too much would be going for a track that the band put together in the last two hours of their studio time after Jive Baby had been completed. However, what you get is a killer gem of pop-punk-dub oddness that gets your head nodding to its infectious, repetitive rhythm laden with effects. With just this one (perfect) track available for license it seemed only right to hand it over to the in-house production team, Apophenia, to do their increasingly trademark dubbed out reworking, this time in the form of a true, but respectful "Version" for the flip. With both members of The Jellies sadly now living overseas this piece of early '80s British dub as it were, can now be fully treasured for posterity while also, proving a nice little smokers delight.