Paraphrasing the Soul Sonic Force and sorting through today`s releases for tunes that could have graced Alfredo Fiorito & Leo Mas’ Amnesia dance-floor…

Chemistry Collective / Mentally In Chemistry Thugged Out / Piecelock 70

I spend a lot of time driving my youngest son around – often to places he ain’t so keen on going – school, the library, “study club” – as begins to cram for exams. To try to sugar the pill we play his music. Loud. Since we live in the middle of nowhere, the average round trip anywhere is 40-50 Km. So far this year, I feel like I’ve listened to more J-pop, K-pop, and Japanese hip hop than anything else. I find myself humming New Jeans tunes in the shower. I do my best to be the interested dad, spotting samples, while he does his very best disinterested teenager. A knock-on effect, though, is that his playlists have had me digging back through my old hip hop, and keeping an ear out for new 45s, Japanese or otherwise, that he might like. Chemistry Collective’s Mentally In Chemistry Thugged Out fits that bill. Thes One, who was one half of highly respected Californian crew, People Under The Stairs, produced this limited 7.* Kid Abstrakt and Blame One also provide rhymes. The former is another long-standing affiliate of both PUTS and The Pharcyde. DJ Chaps One supplies the “summer madness” siren scratches on this seasonal sunshine groove, while the beats and cadence, the playful poetic artistry recall another cool turn-of-the-millennium hip hop outfit, Jurassic 5. 

Personally, PUTS were a tip from the folks who worked and hung out at Brighton’s One40five Store, while Pleasure Unit’s Damon Halvin / Kenny Wisdom turned me onto Jayou. He also gave me one of their highly coveted t-shirts. 

Another tune that’s a damn fine flashback to a time when I was still buying a ton of hip hop – before I got hooked on Company Flow and it all got a bit dark – is DJP’s remix of Biz Markie’s Vapors on Wack Records. The music is a De La / 3 Feet High And Rising-like  mix of James Brown and Young Holt Unlimited’s Soulful Strut, while The Biz’s classic rap disses hypocrites and mean spirited so and sos.

Electric Chairs / So Many Ways / Soul Jazz

American band, Electric Chairs initially backed punk legend, Jayne County, before they went their separate ways. One side of this repro 7 – part of Soul Jazz Records’ Punk 45 series – , J’Attends Les Marines, is strange dubbed-out rock. A kind of prog-y folk ballad, where instead of a chorus it has big, ringing delayed axe chords, while its percussion is phased and metallic. The other, So Many Ways, has its live instrumentation knocking out a tight locked groove. Robotic dead pan vocals accompanying its rapid mutated rhythmic riffing, rather like The Flying Lizards. This similarity very likely down to The Lizards’ David Cunningham handling production. It’s an excellent, eccentric, funk-not-funk nugget. That overlord of obscurities, Cherrystones, recently remixed it, and it’s the sort of side you could imagine Andrew Weatherall spinning on his NTS show, or David Holmes sneaking into the Killing Eve soundtrack. 

Rome Jefferies / Good Love / Backatcha

Originally released on the NYC label, Rain Records, in 1983, Rome Jefferies’ Good Love is a slice of essential Balearic soul. Horny, but restrained, drum-machine driven mid-tempo boogie. With clipped rhythm guitar and super squelchy synthesised bass, bongo breakdown, cowbell, and brief burst of piano. Backatcha have now reissued it. 

Piero Umiliani / Il Corpo / Four Flies 

Rome’s Four Flies have taken 2 tracks from prolific Italian composer, Piero Umiliani’s score for the 1974 soft core skin flick, Il Corpo. Chaser is a lush, funky love theme – highly strung, with an arrangement further flavoured by harpsichord and wah-wah guitar. Hard Times is slower, organ and piano-led, and perhaps even better. The orchestration recalling Stringtronics library music classic, Mindbender. The b-line rivalling Bill Conti’s work on Rocky. 

*Live At The Fishbucket (Pt. 2) was the cut that I used to cane. Mike Turner, Double K, Rest In Peace.