caribbean

The world of lounge, exotica and easy listening is a bottomless pit, with an unfathomable amount of golden material buried under crap music every day. Who would have thought the talented Mexican pianist Pepe Jaramillo will one day be forgotten?

For all y’all who can’t get into literature and especially poetry, British spoken word artist Mr. Anthony Joseph is once again wrapping words with infectious grooves to make it digestable for you, because who can resist the Carribean beat, right?.

Strut Records the !K7 sublabel who gave us the Nigeria 70 compilation a few months ago is back with a new compilation from the same time period in a new setting : Calypsoul 70: Caribbean Soul 1969-1979.

Here’s an astonishing reissue of exotic jazz from 1984. Still Around by the Rudy Smith Quartet is the first record Rudy Smith made under his own name after the Modern Sound Quartet. Now, if you’re wondering what steel pan music is, you should stop what you’re doing and watch the video mindboggling live video below.

Icy Demons from Chicago has their 3rd album out on the Japanese Easel label. Man Man’s Christopher Powell & Bablicon’s Griffin Rodriguez seem to be the main men of this band, assisted by other Chicago musicians with such silly names as Ali Hawkbar and Ta-Freek-Ya!.

Hey folks, time for a new post today. If you remember the Fanga post, I was talking about a second afrobeat album. Well the time has come to that. Kokolo Afrobeat Orchestra is an 8 piece orchestra from New York. Their debut from 2004 had the fabulous opener “Donkey” which had made me hunt the album back then..