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Raveena; smooth, cross-cultural blending
New album: Eclectic, striking mainstream label debut LP for the 27-year-old American pop artist Raveena Aurora who mixes rhythms and more from her Sikh Indian heritage with traits of R&B, soul, funk, 00s trip-hop and ambient electronica
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Favourite selection part 2.
Favourite albums of 2021 – Part 2: Welcome the second instalment, following Part 1, which can be found here. A huge number of excellent releases, of which again this is just a selection many of which were written during, and about lockdown, but also saw many outstanding voices emerge as well as innovative sounds developed
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Take your pick. Are your favourites here? Also check out Part 2 coming soon.
Favourite albums of 2021, part 1: Another difficult year for everyone, but from soul and jazz, electro-pop the experimental and avant-garde, an outstanding one for music releases, perhaps in part because out of diversity comes great art. Also feel free to explore Part 2, which is now available to view here.
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From the cover of Parcels’ new album Day/Night
New album: Released in last month by the Australia-Berlin electrofunk/disco quintet, a superbly catchy package of sounds, styles and danceability based on a 24-hour concept across a truly diverse 19 tracks
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Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars
New album: Something of a perfect pairing – two superstars come together with a shared niche passion for 70s funk and soul, and with guests including bassists Thundercat and Bootsy Collins, this brings rich, scintillating results
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The Solution is Restless
New album: Joan Wasser and her long-time collaborator’s brilliant, beautiful, dark, and perfectly paced blend of funk-afro-jazz with vocals, bass, piano, strings, horns, and stored sessions from the great departed afrobeat drum pioneer
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Sam Evian’s third album, Time To Melt
New album: Warm, woozy and fluid, an appropriate title for this super smooth third album by Sam Griffin Owens, the Brooklyn based artist, decorated with light funk, 70s psychedelic soul and lush, orchestral instrumentation
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Rebecca Taylor’s back
New album: Rotherham’s Rebecca Taylor returns with a second LP under her liberated moniker after Compliments Please with an even greater triumph of darkly humorous and caustic honesty topped with glorious gospel harmonies, big drums, orchestration and a celebration of emancipated womanhood
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Sympathy For Life by Parquet Courts
New album: After 2018’s acclaimed LP Wide Awake!, the Brooklyn band return with a sharp collection of post-punk intermingled with dance music that mixes funk, electronica, psychedelia and krautrock with improvisational energy
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Remi Wolf’s full LP debut Juno
New album: This full debut by the charismatic 25-year-old Californian matches her persona – fluorescent, fizzy funk-psych-pop full of bright singing, bursting with sugary, almost wieldy but playfully imaginative energy
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The ninth album by Pond
New album: No surprise that this is the ninth album by the Australians psychedelic rock and pop band, a dynamic release with a wide variety of styles, intelligent, atypical lyrics, passionate delivery and wonderful unpredictability
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The Allergies - Promised Land
New album: Upbeat, vibrant new LP of old-school-type hip hop mining vintage funk and soul samples with added guest rappers, skilfully put together by the Bristol pair of Roy Spencer aka DJ Moneyshot and producer Rackabeat aka Adam Volson
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Kit Sebastian’s second album – Melodi
New album: A magical, mesmeric second album by the London-based French and Turkish pair of Kit Martin and Merve Erdem is a unique fusion of vocals, jazz, funk, psych, featuring zithers, harpsichords, congas, bongos, bulbul tarang, balalaikas, organs, and saxophone
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Elevated sound. Agustin White and Mike Stroud
New album: As groovy-funk-psych-pop as it gets. The single Frosty was previously a Song of the Day, and now this cosmos-themed album by by producers and multi-instrumentalists Mike Stroud (from Ratatat) and Agustin White (White Flight), follows keeps the fun, and the standard high
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K Bay is Matthew E. White’s third album under his own name
New album: Dynamic, diverse and undefinable, this first solo album for six years by the witty Virginia songwriter, producer, and founder of Spacebomb Records founder spans genres from funk, electronica, piano pop and disco to the playful and experimentally cinematic
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New album: An upbeat, wonderfully catchy and evocative new LP release by the Blur guitarist of pop-indie-disco-funk-prog numbers as soundtrack to a book of 15 graphic novel sci-fi stories, in a dystopian setting stemmed from his passion for the genre
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Jungle: Loving In Stereo
New album: West London’s Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland return with undeniably, strong, catchy selection of falsetto soul and disco pop that has strings, horns, hip hop and gospel elements that hit perfect, broad appeal notes
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Yola: gloriously powerful
New album: The title track was a splendid previous Song of the Day, and the rest of this second album by the equally stands up as excellent soul and funk by the singer and songwriter Yolanda Quartey from Bristol
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Welcome 2 America is the third Prince LP since his death in 2016
New album: The third posthumous album since the Purple One’s untimely passing in 2016 stands out as the best for a long time, including when he was alive, packed with punchy funk, soul, and social commentary that echoes peak-period Curtis Mayfield
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Joel Culpepper’s debut LP
New album: With an impressive, extraordinary vocal range, especially in falsetto, the south-east Londoner’s debut LP feels like an instant soul and funk classic, bulked great bass and brass, and shored up with a team of top-notch producers
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