Luxury Soul

Rhino's expansive six-CD box set of 1970s soul called Can You Dig It?, this wonderfully sequenced collection stands as an impressive survey of the genre in its own right, running the gamut from Al Green and Marvin Gaye to the Chi-Lites, Sly Stone, the Staple Singers, and Earth, Wind & Fire and beyond with nary a slack track in sight. It may technically be a sampler, but in being so it doesn't have the luxury of pausing for breath or historical reflection, which means this compilation, sampler or not, delivers bang for the buck from end to end.

Last summer we enjoyed the first fruits of a UK soul "supergoup" – The British Collective; a team that consisted of star vocalists Don E, Junior Giscombe, Leee John, Noel McKoy and Omar. Now as we enter a new year, another UK "supergroup" arrives to treat us to some fine music. The Brit Funk Association is made up of former members of Beggar and Co, Hi Tension, Central Line and Light of the World and though the various members have known each other for a long, long time it was in the autumn of 2016 that they decided to get together…

Ronnie Dyson was a Broadway star before making records. He was born in Washington D.C., but grew up in New York, taking to the stage in 1960s and ultimately voicing one of the decade's best known show tunes, Aquarius. He was just 18 when he joined the cast of Hair with a lead role in the show. Ronnie also featured in a movie Putney Swope in 1969 before signing to Columbia Records the following year. The albums we present here were Ronnie's third and fourth for the label and represent the complete set of songs recorded by the artist produced by Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy.

After creating a marvelous electronic debut, Glenn Gregory, Ian Marsh, and Martyn Ware decided to tamper with their winning formula a bit on Heaven 17's 1983 follow-up to Penthouse and Pavement. The result, which added piano, strings, and Earth, Wind, & Fire's horn section to the band's cool synthesizer pulse, was even better, and The Luxury Gap became one of the seminal albums of the British new wave. The best-known track remains "Let Me Go," a club hit that features Gregory's moody, dramatic lead above a percolating vocal and synth arrangement. But even better is the mechanized Motown of "Temptation," a deservedly huge British smash that got a shot of genuine soul from R&B singer Carol Kenyon.