Dynasty - Adventures in the Land of Music (1980)

Often widely known for Camp Lo's sampling of the title track, this is Dynasty's best album, covering a variety of styles, whilst maintaining the Solar-records poppy funk synth sound. The album starts with two pounding disco-funk tracks, moves on to the obligatory but very good ballad track, maintains momentum with two killer tracks before stumbling at the only really poor track, the dodgy doo-woppy 'Something to Remember', but the amazing 'Adventures' soon pops out of nowhere, with the funky 'Ice Breaker' rounding off the album. On the whole a surprisingly strong album for anyone with any interest in disco, boogie or funk.



Dynasty - Adventures in the Land of Music

TWEEASFUNK

This is a mixtape by Paul Nice of nice 70s soul tunes. It's mainly relatively well known tunes, but the mixing and selection is impeccable.

soul on the grill


This is a mix of essentially Jackson 5 inspired funk and soul. Selected and mixed by Oakland DJ Matthew Africa, who also runs an awesome blog and has released a number of other great mixes.

http://matthewafrica.blogspot.com/2009/03/twee-funk-revisited.html

Fela Kuti & Koola Lobitos - Afro Beat On Stage: Recorded Live at The Afro Spot

a '66 live LP by fela's highlife band, released on polydor and i think never reissued on cd except as part of various compilations of his '60s works, most recently as a bonus 10" with vampisoul's excellent "lagos baby" double LP comp

the sound quality is pretty bad, there is a weird echo to fela's voice and the mix is pretty muddy, but if anything that gives the whole thing character, makes it even rawer; and it is pretty raw, taking highlife's typical horn freakouts to new funky extremes, with percussion way too mad for hit singles but perfect for this saturday night session (he says "tomorrow we have a sunday afternoon jam!" after the first track!)

the title might claim it is afrobeat, and certainly some of the tunes, especially the 7-minute "akro", give some hints of the direction fela would take post '69, but it's still distinctly highlife, west africa's lastingly popular dance music which takes strong hints from jazz although generally maintaining rhythmic discipline over all. fela doubles on sax & vocals here i think, but it's a band affair - i don't know if it's tony allen behind the drumkit, but whoever it is, he's on fire. the opener, "everyday i got my blues" is pretty mellow and easy, but after that things pick up and peak towards the end.

A1 - Everyday I Got My Blues
A2 - Moti Gbrokan
A3 - Waka Waka
B1 - Ako
B2 - Ororuka
B3 - Laise

http://www.mediafire.com/?winyx4zd1zt