VA - The Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club, Vol. 3 (2014)

...a few words by the man himself...

The Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club returns - and Volume 3 is a truly international round up of all things hip, happening and gorgeously groovy!

Since Volume 2 was released a year ago, I've continued my mission to spread the sound of good grooves right around the world, not just via my radio shows on 6Music and BBC Radio 2, or by DJ-ing to a huge sea of humanity at Glastonbury Festival 2014, but I also took my trunk of funk to Australia to spread my kind of dance floor dynamite to Antipodean audiences hungry for fresh soulful sounds and some foot stomping funk.

The Budos Band - Burnt Offering (2014)

 'Burnt Offering,' the new album from The Budos Band, is a wild, booze-fueled ride of hazy riffs, take-no-prisoners horn lines and relentless percussion that summons the occult - an evolved sound for this mighty 10-piece band sparked by their love of Black Sabbath and Pentagram.  'Burnt Offering,' The Budos Band's first album in four years, will be released October 21 on Daptone Records.  Says Pitchfork of The Budos Band: "So tight and in tune that they've basically become this telepathically-communicating instrumental hydra that ambushes you into moving your body on its terms."

Dawn Pemberton - Say Something (2014)

Vancouver soul dynamo Dawn Pemberton has a deep musical foundation rooted in tradition. Spending her formative years surrounded by a family of multi-instrumentalists she developed a true love of music from the very beginning. A staple of the West Coast music scene, she can be found tearing it up as a vocalist, arranger, and go-to for live performances and studio sessions.

The secret weapon of funk and soul groups all over Western Canada, she has shared the stage with the likes of Maceo Parker, Linda Tillery, John Lee Sanders, The Sojourners, John Boutte, and Dutch Robinson. Her gifts have been featured in the music of future jazz group 1Luv (Sonar Kollektiv) and the blues duo The Harpoonist and The Axe Murderer.

The Heliocentrics & Melvin Van Peebles - The Last Transmission (2014)

The Last Transmission is an interplanetary space/love odyssey told in twelve chapters; it comes nearly ten years after Van Peebles’ appearance as the third member of Quasimoto on Stones Throw Records’ 2005 release The Further Adventure of Lord Quas. For the Heliocentrics, The Last Transmission represents their third Now-Again album, following Out There in 2007 and 13 Degrees of Reality in 2013.

Van Peebles makes for the Heliocentrics’ ideal foil: he did graduate work in astronomy in Holland in the 1950s and maintains an avid interest in cosmology. The Heliocentrics, as their name conveys, draw inspiration from both the philosophic leanings of the likes of Stephen Hawkings and interstellar mysteries, like those surrounding the Malian Dogon tribe’s knowledge of the Sirius B star hundreds of years before it was discovered. Their music is as indebted to Sun Ra’s interstellar jazz as it is inspired by psychedelia’s spiritual expanse.