Attempting to recreate the golden yesterdays of Jose Padilla`s White Isle sunsets with the tunes of today. 

Ambala / Quiet Yellow Purple / Music For Dreams

Phil “Cantoma” Mison’s Music For Dreams project, Ambala, shares a new track, Quiet Yellow Purple. A collaboration with composer Troels Hammer and producer Anders Ponsaing. This creative combination, unsurprisingly serves up some sublime, serene, sonics. The single is a gentle synth, and beautiful bowed cello, serenade that rides, glides on a plucked pizzicato rhythm. Its haunting harmonica adding the air of an outtake from a 1980s Betty Blue-esque art house movie score.  

Awen Ensemble / She Moves Through The Fair / New Soil

Eight-piece Leeds collective Awen Ensemble’s new single is a gentle jazz cover of the traditional Irish folk song, She Moves Through The Fair. Joe Wilkes‘ double-bass drives the tune’s tragic narrative, while the combined brass of Emyr Penry Dance and Saul Duff conveys its condolences and sympathies to the story of doomed love, and a wedding day that will never be. Amy Clark‘s voice, of course, is the piece’s focal point. Soaring and swooning, as she does her best Sandy Denny. Her high notes reaching for Sinead O’Connor‘s passion and heartbreak. 

GC OCONNOR / Soul Lament

GC OCONNOR’s press one-sheet describes her music as “stoner soul”. However, the single, Stay, is a marvellous mix of jazz and blues. Initially focused on GC’s multi-tracked voice, the mood melancholy as she pleads with a lover that’s all set to leave, the song from cool, sparse keys to an explosion of sophisticated, brushed drum syncopation. The first comparison that I thought of was Melanie De Biasio’s classic, No Deal. 

Nick & Samantha & Chris Coco / Tropicalia / DSSPR

On Tropicalia, Nick & Samantha take an imaginary trip to Brazil, accompanied by Chris Coco. The trio use acoustic picking, cool, calm keys, and slow sparse percussion to paint pictures of a lovers secluded honeymoon hideaway. Softly scatted lullabies that sugared with birdsong, secret, enchanted forest sound effects, a flutter of flute, and morning after the night before memories of yesterday’s carnival whistles. The results recalling Haruomi Hosono’s Jose Padilla-endorsed exotica homage, Paraiso. 

Onegram / AEO (Slowly Dub) / Jazz Rooom

Legendary DJ Paul Murphy’s imprint, Jazz Room, have reissued Japanese fusion outfit, Onegram’s wonderful cover of Brian Briggs’ David Mancuso / Loft favourite, AEO. The melody, here, replayed on woodwind and brass, rather than Brian’s machines. Originally released on Tokyo’s Flower Records in 2020, the Slowly Dub fills the tune with a loved-up reggae flavour. The backing now brings to mind Lord Echo’s super skanking shake of Sister Sledge’s Thinking Of You. Once the chorus hits, it’s like instant sunshine. 

Jazz Room have also repressed Take Vibe’s “lounge” versions of The Strangler’s Golden Brown and The Police’s Walking On The Moon. In case you missed out on these essentials from Laurence Mason’s terrific trio the first, second, or third time around. 

Penguin Cafe / Perpetuum Mobile (ft. The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra) / Erased Tapes

Arthur Jeffes’ Penguin Cafe collaborate with The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra to reimagine one of his father, Simon’s most instantly recognisable pieces, Perpetuum Mobile. Transforming the playful chamber composition into a full orchestra epic, and perhaps bringing the PCO full circle. Are the Penguin Cafe still a cult / niche thing? If so, then this should definitely remedy that, and bring them to the mainstream. I recently caught the ballet “Still Life At The Penguin Cafe” in Tokyo, and the opening number, Air A Danser, almost brought me to tears, thinking about how proud Simon, and Jose Padilla, the DJ who did so much to popularise their music, would have been to have seen it. I get a very similar feeling listening to this new take. The original version has a special significance for me, since it was the first PCO tune that I got into. I picked up a copy of the 1987 LP, Signs Of Life (it was the only one I could find), from Soho’s Sister Ray Records, after Andrew Weatherall mentioned the ensemble in “acid house’s village newspaper”, the Boys Own fanzine.  

Ella Raphael / See You Through / Fire Records

The Indie institution, Fire Records, is currently home to some musical folks that I’m really into – Vanishing Twin, Jane Weaver, Death & Vanillia – to name just a few. Their latest signing is singer / songwriter Ella Raphael, and the track, See You Through, is her label debut. In a 3-minute emotional epic, accompanied by gentle acoustic strum and pedal steel, Ella’s croon comes damn close Karen Dalton’s  – and that’s not a reference I bandy about lightly. The music is a sort of cosmic American blues. New age synth swells mixing with organ and rolling piano, played as if by Dan Penn or Donnie Fritts during a Fame Studios lock-in. 

Secret Soul Society / Late Nights / Paper Recordings 

This digital 5-tracker from Secret Soul Society main man, and super-reviewer, Cal Gibson, contains the cool, Bet It’s A Groove, whose jaunty but gentle programmed patterns sound like Cluster’s pastoral kosmische  played on a Casio keyboard. It’s summery melody, and quirky SFX, like Lemon Jelly sharing a Cambridge punt with Stereolab’s poppier moments.