We’ve selected 4 new albums to kickstart your summer and help you enjoy rather than endure the heat!
Da Lukas. Get Back. Groove Culture.
Salvo De Luca has been turning out nu disco and house records from Italy for over two decades. His remix credits alone read like a who’s who of club music: Who Da Funk, Jakatta, Maceo Plex, Jamiroquai’s Derrick McKenzie, Joey Negro. MasterClass named him alongside Daft Punk, Faze Action, and Prins Thomas as one of four artists who shaped the trajectory of nu disco. And yet he remains the kind of producer most people discover sideways, through a DJ set or a Traxsource chart, rather than a headline.
Get Back is a 16-track album that pulls vocalists from across the spectrum. Amanda Wilson on the title track. Gabrielle on What Would We Do. Suki Soul on Searching For The One and Ain’t Coming Down. Stella Brown on Stand Up and Shine Bright Within. The production sits somewhere between proper house and the funkier end of disco. Sicily Theme and Viva close the record on an instrumental run that gives the album space to breathe after an hour of vocal tracks. This is a proper disco dancefloor banger, and the perfect way to get the weekend started!
Samory I. Revelation.
We just interviewed Samory I. Whilst an artists struggle with depression isn’t the normal pathway for the soundtrack to your summer, in this case, Samory’s battle with his own demons has yielded some wonderful reggae vibes.
It is, track for track, one of the strongest roots reggae records released this year. Zion opens with the kind of conviction that makes you stop what you’re doing and pay attention. Letter To My Son, featuring Baye Gallo, is personal and relates to his 6 year old son. Warning with Keznamdi and Siren with Govana sit on production that leans into dancehall without abandoning the roots, and that’s a deliberate move. As Samory put it in our interview, dancehall dominates Jamaican radio. If you want the message heard, you sometimes meet the riddim where the audience already is. Cruise with Agent Sasco and Victory with Chronic Law close the album hard, and both tracks have been doing the rounds at dances and on festival lineups since their early single releases.
If you know the name, you already have this. If you don’t, start here.
Common Saints. Age of Illusions. Starsonics.
Psychedelic soul from London. Common Saints have been building quietly since their Idol Eyes EP in 2020 and Summer Sun, a single that racked up close to 30 million Spotify streams without any of the usual industry machinery behind it.
Age of Illusions is the best thing they’ve done. Illusions opens the EP with a warmth that sits somewhere between early Tame Impala and classic Stevie Wonder, which sounds like an absurd claim until you hear it. Soothsayer pushes into something darker and more textured. Stargaze is the centrepiece, and it does exactly what the title promises. Night Light closes the set and leaves you wanting a full album, which is exactly the right length for an EP to be.
They’re playing KOKO in London on 12 November. At 2.2 million monthly Spotify listeners they won’t be playing rooms that size for much longer. Go while the tickets are still obtainable.
Troublemakers. Doubts & Convictions. B!zzy (reissue).
This is a 25th anniversary repress of a record that originally came out in 2001 on Guidance Recordings out of Chicago. The trio behind it, Fred Berthet, Arnaud Taillefer, and DJ Oil, met in 1998 at La Friche Belle in Marseille. They spent two years in the studio. What came out was a jazz-funk-breakbeat record threaded with French film dialogue and smoky Parisian vocals that sounds like a film score for a city at 4am.
Street Preacher opens the album and sets the tone immediately. Get Misunderstood has an ultra-slinky groove that would sit comfortably on a DJ Shadow record. Chez Roger Boîte Funk does exactly what the title suggests. Black City, built around a Taxi Driver sample with a hip-hop beat and saloon piano, closes the album in a way that makes you want to start it again.
Originals had been going for serious money on Discogs. This repress arrived on 23 June on B!zzy. If you care about downtempo, breakbeat, or the jazzier side of French electronic music, this is one of the great albums from that era and it sounds as good now as it did then. Possibly better, given how much of what’s come since has tried to do the same thing with half the finesse!
