Jungle’s new album Loving In Stereo is the soundtrack for a summer quite unlike any other. The British producer duo have created a huge disco record for the post-social distancing age, with a life-affirming, dancefloor-igniting, sun-kissed celebration of all the things that make music irresistibly joyful. Both their Mercury Prize-nominated, Gold-certified debut and 2018’s follow-up For Ever landed in the UK Top 10 and charted globally.
Soul Jazz apply keen ears to the ingenious era of UK rave, hardcore and jungle and its unprecedented stylistic shifts of the early ‘90s with a haul of seminal, obscure and killer cuts.
Volcano follows Jungle’s previous album Loving In Stereo, which proved to be a landmark moment for the acclaimed UK duo. It achieved their highest domestic UK chart position to date debuting at #3, while also achieving their best ever album chart positions in key international territories such as Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands; and in the US it catapulted to #1 on the Billboard Dance Albums chart which led to major Arena shows as guests to Billie Eilish.
This special collector's edition contains 30 remastered recordings by Charlie Feathers, consisting of a selection of the magnificent tunes he made at his peak for different labels (such as Sun, Meteor, Kay, Wal-May and King Records) between 1955 and 1962. All of his most famous songs and enduring singles are featured on this great CD, which is a quintessential testament to the true genius of rockabilly's main man, the late, great Charlie Feathers.
This recording is the World Premiere of Charles Koechlin's Jungle Book and received the Orchestral Gramophone Award and was, memorably, accepted by the son of the composer. Charles Koechlin loved Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and set different parts of the book to music at various points in his career. The first of these - The Three Poems - bear the titles: Seal Lullaby, Night Song in the Jungle and Song of Kala Nag, with texts from The Jungle Book. The music, scored during 1904 - 04, is exotic and evocative. The lullaby mimics the gently lapping of waves as the soprano and chorus spin a soothing tapestry of sound. The Night-Song in the Jungle had a cadence that suggests movement (sung by the soprano, tenor, baritone and chorus) and is a song of well-wishing to the animals of the night. The Song of Kala Nag is a lament of an elephant that has been tamed for his old life in the jungle, sung by the tenor. The poem describes a night in the year when all of the elephants gather to dance together and, rather than being somber, the music is triumphant as the elephant recounts his past freedom and vows to have it again.
A mad mix of Latin and funky rhythms – a 70s classic from the Belgian group Chakachas! The album's best known for its title hit "Jungle Fever" – an insane cut that features heavy drums, choppy guitar, and a stop/start action that's peppered with sounds of female pleasure! The track was a worldwide hit, and continues to be a funky classic today – thanks to a heavy sample history, and a life in playlists worldwide – but the rest of the album's pretty darn great too, and even weirder. Some tracks mix easy Euro grooving with heavy conga, others have kind of an LA Chicano funk approach, and still others throw in some mad horns to complicate matters with nice jazzy riffing. Really great throughout – and maybe one of the best funky albums to ever come out on a major label!
George Brigman sounded like a man out of time on his rare mid-'70s debut, Jungle Rot (though it's not so rare anymore, having been reissued both legitimately and illegitimately on several labels). Unlike the oncoming punks and new wavers, he had an obvious affinity as a keeper of the flame of classic rock forms, most particularly the late-'60s/early-'70s blues-rock of British bands such as the Groundhogs. Yet if this was blues-rock, it was blues-rock the D.I.Y. way, recorded on his own with a mass of hazy distorted guitar lines…