Herbie Hancock Lite me up

Recognized most for his keyboard work but also a composer, producer, arranger, and vocoder-armed vocalist, Brandon Coleman is among the flock of jazz-rooted musicians hatched out of Los Angeles during the early 2000s. The musician is connected with virtually all West Coast luminaries of his generation – Kamasi Washington, Ryan Porter, Miles Mosley, Thundercat, and so on – and has ventured stylistically afield with Babyface and Anthony Hamilton among those who have sought his talent. Moreover, Coleman is likely the lone link from smooth jazz stalwart Boney James to polyglot experimentalist Flying Lotus, the latter of whom featured him on Until the Quiet Comes and You're Dead!, and issued Resistance on his Brainfeeder label. This is actually Coleman's second album as a leader. His first, Self Taught, received a low-key release in 2011 and a few years later was reissued in Japan. Like it, Resistance enables Coleman to indulge in his affinity for late-'70s/early-'80s electronic funk from a jazz perspective. As a teenager, around the time he started learning to play, his head was spun by Herbie Hancock's vocoder-ized Sunlight, and that work, as well as other openhearted moments of the master's catalog from Man-Child through Lite Me Up, informs the material here. Considering Coleman's rare spotlight, truckload of stockpiled gear (20 instruments, just for himself), and accommodation of fellow instrumentalists and background singers numbering in the dozens (including many L.A. players), Resistance is extraordinarily condensed.

Paris born guitar virtuoso Emmanuel “U-Nam” Abiteboul always had a great affinity for funk. This passion runs through his entire life's work and reaches its peak with the California Funk Machine. Volume I is a collection of selected pieces of funk history that brought it the greatest success and had a decisive impact on it.

Turn up the volume! While the first “Fahrt ins Blaue” (journey into the blue/unknown) album from ACT in 2016 offered classy songs for chilling, a great place just to hang out and relax, the new album “FiB II - groovin' in the spirit of jazz” leads us straight out onto the dance floor. From the moment it opens up, with funky jazz, gritty blues and bucketloads of soul, this compilation sets the tone for a night of partying.

GREATEST EVER! is Union Square Music’s select, best-selling label, utilising the very best repertoire from key major labels, Greatest Ever’s 3CD box sets are some of the strongest multi-artist compilations on the market, with the greatest ever songs.