Collection: New Releases

PPU is one of your favourite labels when it comes to dusty and lo-fi soul and related sounds. Now the DC-based crew delivers another gem with Grand Hotel, a collection of ten rare tracks from Estonian funk legend Uku Kuut, who they have released several times before now. The instrumental album traces Kuut's journey through the Soviet Union, Sweden, Los Angeles, and Estonia and is a window into his excellently eclectic style. Highlights include his first home recording from 1982 and a track produced in Herbie Hancock's studio. After more than 30 years of travelling across borders, these precious masters have found a permanent home and means that Grand Hotel is a fine tribute to Kuut's international influences.

Maledetta Discoteca proudly announces the birth of their first daughter LA SIRENETTA (*The mermaid) and the release of her first record! An hommage to the Italian Afro scene of the late 80s, La Sirenetta is a sub-label born to take World Music to the next level for the contemporary Dancing Club Scene. We aim at digging, selecting and editing obscure bangers from our analogue record collections, travelling from Martinique to Ivory Coast, from Nigeria to Haiti, and giving them back to deejays and dancefloors in high-quality, highly collectable, 12” releases.

Jéroboam, also known in the streets of Paris and Montreuil as Echoes Of, is celebrating Britfunk and the rich musical heritage of Greater London, reflecting their deep appreciation for the iconic Britfunk sound. After several successful collaborations celebrating the genre with the label at the infamous New Morning venue in Paris, Jéroboam has crafted two brilliant compositions for this EP.

Chicago underground legend Mark Grusane presents "Take Me" on his own Disctechno imprint, a proper 12" single featuring vocals from DJ Saucy Lady, the "Beantown Disco Queen." The lead single uses a driving bassline, infectious synth fills and filtered arps and pads to build up an electrified disco heater with sweat-soaked NRG. Saucy Lady's seductive, dubbed out vocals bounce off the walls with a repeating mantra of "just take me" and spoken words from a creature of the night, backed by her harmonizing ooh's and aah's. This combination sounds something like Bobby O locked in a Chicago basement during a heatwave with nothing but a fog machine and broken A/C for company. On the B-Side, disco wizard Rahaan reworks the lead single with a "Psychedelic Dub" that layers the sounds of machine funk synth sweeps and disorienting tweaks for a mesmerizing take on the lead single. On either side of the record are also the Dub Instrumental and Accappella versions - versatile tools for freaking out any dancefloor.

Functional and nostalgic House stunners - highly recommended.

Don Carlos should by now be known to most house music crate-ologists as Carlo Troja from Verase, Italy -not Euvin Spencer from Kingston town. Alas, confusion still runs rampant over the ambiguity surrounding the Don Carlos name; if only they'd heard just how great this new EP from the former North Italian nuff-sayer truly was, they'd never forget the difference, of course! 'Italian Paradise' is a fresh, still dripping-wet house EP out via Groove Culture; its lightweight organ triplets, electric piano smears, and lens-fogged sunglass strings are what makes it *it*: a more than suitable release for hammock skygazing and/or wooly garment shedding.

LA's Jarren returns to Apron Records with a six-track EP of glitz. Following on the heels of his last LP Antera, 'Fresco' marks a return to the EP form, and flaunts some of the crispest, swangiest electronic funk, house and electro on offer in the city of angels right now. We open with 'Jam', which catches us off guard almost but signalling that this could be the start of another kind of record, with staccato sports whistles, and three-note cheese synths aplenty, against a decided new jack swing. Only after this detour are we offered the real meat on things; the knocking 4x4 neons of 'Round & Round' and 'Florence Blue', and the increasing raw bootylectro of 'Gina' and/or 'The Way You Do'.

Italian twosome Gino and Dino (that's G&D to you and me) have released some of the most on-point and well-crafted re-edits of recent times. Their EPs are always worth a look, and this one - the first of two featuring other editors alongside the popular duo - is no exception. They begin on side A with 'PeeGee870', a fine version of a low-slung, synth-sporting Italian disco chugger from (we think) the turn of the 1980s, before moving on to the eyes closed disco bliss of 'understanding', where heady lead vocals and sweeping orchestration catches the ear. Over on side B, the previous unheard G.Bros and In.an offer up their 'Balearic' edit of 'Polpette', joining the dots between laidback, loved-up disco, quirky Balearic colour and huggable dancefloor lusciousness.

Milo Johnson AKA DJ Nature is not a newcomer to the re-edit scene - he's been serving up reworks, bootlegs and floor-focused DJ tools for decades - but he has become more prominent in recent years, thanks in no small part to the efforts of edit specialists Hot Biscuit Recordings. Here he delivers the second part of his Versions project, offering up six more revisions stretched across two slabs of wax. Check first the lightly dubbed-out, string-laden jazz-funk shuffle of 'Felix', before admiring the summery South American jazz-fusion brilliance of 'Caso De Amor de Brasileiro' and the low-slung funk-goes-jazz-dance headiness of 'Steppin'. His love of low-slung, dub-flecked workouts returns on EP highlight 'Tarzoon March', before he reaches for the lasers on disco-funk jam 'Disco Queen' and successfully tampers with a jazzy deep disco number on 'Have Mercy'.

Hot Biscuit Recordings' has spent the last couple of years delivering killer re-edit EPs, mostly from veteran talents including Rahaan and the Idjut Boys. For this 12", they've recruited another long-established re-editor, Brooklyn-based Japanese-American producer (and East Village Edits main man) DJ Monchan. There is of course a big fat slice of heavily orchestrated disco on show - B-side 'Finally', which seemingly extends and rearranges Steve Bendner's 1977 version of 'The Final Thing' - but it's A-side 'Silent Dub' that hits home hardest. It's sees the Dailysession Records founder turn his attention to a sparse, spaced-out synth-pop record of (we think) the 1980s, re-imagining it as deliciously deep and dubby house record full of trippy effects, echoing vocal snippets and delay-laden percussive elements.