Funk on Life

After the jarring reception of 1999's Synkronized, Jamiroquai constructed A Funk Odyssey, something more polished and slick inside the band's own brand of funky disco-rock. Jason Kay and keyboardist/songwriter Toby Smith perfected a maturation that was left keyed in Travelling Without Moving but left open-ended on Synkronized for a wide scope of musical delight. A Funk Odyssey taps into various illustrious grooves of the Latin world, classic rock, and mainstream club culture, and Jamiroquai is tight and eager to make everyone shake their groove thing in their own light. The first single, "Little L," beams with Kajagoogoo-like synths while warping into a funk-driven hue of orchestral whirlpools, but Jamiroquai allows the band's extroverted and unattached personality to shine on the worldbeat-tinged "Corner of the Earth."

Robinsongs is so proud to be releasing the first Double CD Career Anthology of the R&B supergroup Con Funk Shun. Between January 1977 and October 1986, Con Funk Shun, a seven-piece group originating from Vallejo, a waterfront city in Northern California's Bay Area, racked up 25 R&B hits in their native USA, including the No. 1 R&B single, ‘Ffun’. They were renowned for serving up addictive slices of brassy, dance floor funk but also had a profoundly romantic side; excelling at slow, smooth, passionate ballads. The group was driven by the twin talents of vocalists and songwriters, Michael Cooper and Felton Pilate II, whose contrasting musical characteristics would come to define the group's distinctive sound and style.

Tied to a significant new exhibition at Tate Britain, a killer collection surveying Black Soundsystem culture’s indelible influence on UK over successive generations from the ’70s to the ’00s.

Los Angeles-based soul and jazz guitar man U-NAM (Emmanuel Abiteboul) is a busy old bee! He juggles all kinds of projects – one of which is his THE CALIFORNIA FUNK MACHINE – a soul/funk collective that features an ever-evolving raft of top musicians. The outfit have two albums to their name – imaginatively titled ‘California Funk Machine Volume 1’ and ‘California Funk Machine Volume 2’ and now, just in time for the Christmas party season, U-Nam and the gang are unleashing a third album – and guess what? Yep, it’s ‘California Funk Machine Volume 3’ Like their first two volumes this third iteration is a collection of soul and funk covers – some more well known than others.

With a history 50+ years in the making, Tower of Power has been a funk institution since 1968, knocking out hits like “What is Hip,” “So Very Hard to Go,” “This Time It’s Real” and “You’re Still a Young Man" while lending their soulful sound to collaborations with Santana, the Grateful Dead, Elton, Huey Lewis, Justin Timberlake and everyone in-between. "50 Years of Funk & Soul - Live at the Fox Theater" captures their storied career with no-holds-barred victory lap concerts in Oakland, CA, performing their full spectrum of life-affirming funk and soul hits to sold out audiences in 2018. Available as a 3-LP set, 2-CD/1-DVD package, standalone DVD and digital audio configuration, these historic performances include alumni special guests Chester Thompson, Lenny Pickett, Francis ‘Rocco’ Prestia, Bruce Conte and Ray Greene.