7"

For over forty years, the Apostles of Aba have stood as the jewel in the crown of the music scene in Eastern Nigeria. Since their formation in 1973, the band has turned out memorable performances in a variety of styles including rock, soul, funk, pop and reggae. Even today, the Apostles continue to thrill audiences in their hometown of Aba with dazzling shows. Cultures of Soul is proud to present one of the Apostles’ more obscure—yet relentlessly funky recordings in a full-color custom reverse board jacket. Banko Woman, originally released on the eponymous LP on Love Day Records in 1977. Straddling the world realms of afro-funk and disco, the track has long been a coveted dance floor filler amongst DJs, and for the first time is available for a wider audience. On the B-side is “Faith, Luck & Music,” also from the original Banko Woman album.

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.

Totally unique and basically undiscovered Ethophian synth groove single by blind keyboardist Haile Mariam G. Ghiorgis. 500 copy press - fully licenced release which comes with a thick high quality picture sleeve.As a first release on this newly founded label, here's two totally unique and undiscovered Ethophian synth groove recordings by blind keyboardist Haile Mariam G. Ghiorgis. Both tracks are taken from the highly collectable and extremely rare debut solo album 'Tigill Lemenor (Survival)'. An album that Ghiorgis released privately in 1985 on his own Pentaton label.Born in Ethiopia in 1952, Haile M. Ghiorgis originally worked as a music instructor after school and played music together with several prominent groups of his countrymen, he was the keyboardist of Mahmoud Ahmed & Ibex Band and played for national stars like Tilahun Gessesse, among others. Due to the communist revolution in Ethiopia in 1974, Haile decided to leave his motherland and he was allowed to leave the country due to his blindness in 1977. Finding a new home in Hamburg, he performed together with various bands, including the afro pop group Soulful Dynamics and Jah Love (an early band of funk drummer and reggae artists Curvin Merchant aka Jamaica Papa Curvin). When those groups disbanded, Ghiorgis was retrained as a piano-tuner but also focussed on his own music.Haile M. Ghiorgis was particularly fascinated by the digital-controlled synthesizer and rhythm-machines, whose operation he mastered without any difficulties in spite of his blindness. The drums came from a Yamaha drum computer and were recorded first. On top of that, bass and the melodies were added. Haile was using a Yamaha DX-7 keyboard, an old small Roland synth as well as an organ by Solton.On the album, which was recorded in his small home studio in Hamburg on a TEAC 8-track tape machine, Haile M. Ghiorgis harmoniously blends western pop and jazz music with his native country's folklore. On the A side, 'Man biye?' is a sort of melancholic love song, it means 'What shall I call you?'. A man searches for something though in vain to compare with the beauty of his beloved. The atmospheric instrumental features brilliant synth solos over deep downtempo beats, sort of like jazzy ethno synth funk in slow motion.Side B of the single is the uplifting disco track 'A Happy Disco Song'. As it says in the liner notes of the LP, the song esteems Ethiopian hospitality and relates how welcome every stranger is and how even the poorest is ready to share with him. The track got a charming 'private' vibe and surely should appeal to DJs and disco/boogie aficiandos.The original LP 'Survival' was primarily sold on live shows when he was on tour in the late 1980s throughout Europe, accompaning fellow Ethopian musicians including jazz legend Mulatu Astatke, among others, and almost never pops up.