Dr. Boogie Presents

Soul Jazz Records’ new Miami Sound 2 is a superlative collection of 70s soul, funk, disco and boogie featuring tracks from legendary artists such as Betty Wright, Timmy Thomas, Gwen McRae, Milton Wright, T-Connection and many more, all released on the mighty TK Records musical empire based in Miami, Florida.

Johnny Winter begins Raisin' Cain, his ninth studio album since signing to CBS Records in 1969 (his records are now issued on the Blue Sky subsidiary), with "The Crawl," a rock & roll dance tune, and he ends it with "Walkin' Slowly," which employs a Fats Domino-style New Orleans rhythm and the saxophone work of Tom Strohman. The two songs serve to reinforce Winter's allegiance to his roots in ‘50s rock, which define him as much as his blues work. In between these bookends, he presents his usual mixture of familiar cover songs and specially written (by others, that is) material, all of which serves, as usual, to showcase his fast-fingered lead guitar playing. His slide guitar dominates "Sittin' in the Jail House," for example, while much of the disc's second side is played in a Chicago blues style that recalls his recent efforts as producer to give Muddy Waters a late-career renaissance, notably the side-opening performance of Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin'." A notable inclusion is a cover of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone".

Sacred Spirit is a musical project by Claus Zundel, Ralf Hamm, and Markus Staab.
This collection presents spare, hypnotic Native American chants augmented with electronic beats, keyboards, and other modern instruments. The mix of these elements is particularly potent on "Looking Far North," which contrasts a rolling melody with female vocals and a sparser, more rhythmic part chanted by a male vocalist, and on "May You Walk in Sunshine," a mix of flutes, strings, and sung and chanted vocals. While this album doesn't offer the purest incarnation of Native American music, it is a pleasant and occasionally unique update on these ancient sounds.