For those of you unaware of John Cunningham AKA JC, he’s one of London’s good guys. An avid collector of vinyl (always a strong look in our book), intensified by stints behind the counters of Soho’s Reckless Records and Flashback in Islington and Crouch End, John knows a thing or two about tunes. I first met him around five or six years ago (*scrathes head* – it’s been that long?!?), at one of the very early Favourite Things jazz sessions and since then we’ve kept in touch. We’ve DJed with him many a time, most notably as one of the many guests  at our intimate Soul-Identity Music sessions in Islington way back when, and he also made a surprise appearance as the after party special guest at last year’s Summer Shakedown Boat Party. A DJ that can both dig deep or rock a crowd, without the ego that seems to affect others, John has always got a home on this site. So when he dropped this mix in our inbox a couple of weeks ago as a follow up to a jazz mix he did for us and the Favourite Things site, we just had to give it a listen. Since then, we’ve been shamefully sitting on it (namely due to the aforementioned lack of time) but the great thing about vintage grooves is they never go out of fashion. So in the art of sharing, we thought we’d better finally unleash this to the masses. So here you go, just under an hour’s worth of soulful disco boogie action from one of London’s finest aficionados of the genre.

TRACKLIST

Blood Hollins – How Have You Been – RCA
Vincent Montana & The Philly Sound Orchestra – That’s What Love Does – PSW
Linda Clifford – Shoot Your Best Shot – Curtom
Michael Wycoff – Still Got The Magic (Sweet Delight) – RCA
Breeze – Just In The Nick Of Time – Silver Dollar
Johnnie Taylor – She’s Killing Me – Columbia
Mandrill – Echoes In My Mind – A&M
The Sylvers – Clap Your Hands To The Music – Capitol
Stevie Woods – Can’t Keep It Lit – Cotillion
Teena Marie – You Make Love Like Springtime – Motown
Teena Marie – You Make Love Like Springtime (Reprise) – Motown

Stream via Mixcloud below:

Been a crazy month so far what with Ibiza and boat parties, and this weekend it doesn’t seem to want to let up. Here are some of the Soul-Identity recommended sessions to tempt you out in this disasterous London weather this weekend.

First up… CDR Special @ 93 East – Free Fridays!

CDR Special @ 93 East - Free Fridays!

The CDR/Burntprogress crew branch out from their well received monthly club night at Plastic People to bring you a one off special in one of Brick Lane’s most renowned spaces, 93 Feet East. Joining CDR founder Mr Tony Nwachukwu on the decks on the night will be the Spacebass crew featuring Floatingpoints from Eglo Records, responsible for the massive Soul-Identity favourite “Love Me Like This”, alongside Liamski, Ben V (Shook Magazine), Davin (Werk Discs) and Chris CTOP. Further DJ support comes from those Soundspecies guys, whose immense self  titled debut was released on the Burntprogress label earlier this year. Not heard it yet? Then go grab the Ahu-voiced treasure “Can We Call It Love” for free from the Burntprogress Soundcloud, then go and give the LP a listen and order it from IfMusic.  Entry is free and tied into the bargain you get three mighty live acts, namely She Is Danger, Phantom and The Mighty Jeddo. Sounds alright don’t it. I’ll be down from 9pm. Come down, say hello and I’ll buy you a pint.

Friday also sees the return or Todd Terje to these shores. If you’re up for something a bit more disco orientated, everyone’s favourite re-edit king is playing at East Village. Entry is £6 before 11pm, £8 after.

Saturday, Greg Wilson plays the Special Needs 5th Birthday Party at The Lockside Lounge (Free b4 8pm, £5 after), Chicago’s favourite disco son DJ Rahaan is making a rare UK appearance for Love Fever set in a secret Shoreditch loft space (this is sold out, but holla at andy@birdsongmusic.com and beg cos its gonna be one ridiculous party) and finally our man from Here & Now Recordings, JC, presides over what seemingly is  to be the final Afrobeat Vibration at The Empowering Church in Dalston. It now appears that I’ll be mainly behaving myself in a grown up capacity around  strangers that night, although in all fairness all three of the above suggest something nice to these old ears, so if you’re at a loose end and around the area you really should try and support.

Here’s to another great weekend in London Town.

So its time for another sporadic post on the Soul-Identity blog (really should stop calling it that, how about quarterly bulletin?). At least, you can’t argue that we indundate you with stuff and  I hope that when we do its something worth shouting about. Props to two certified blogs that do it right, and get checked on the regular on the Soul-Identity Google Reader – I’m calling out Put Me On It and FreshSelects – both worthy of your attention if you don’t know already (just check the latter’s recent Charles Hamilton post for some quality breaking news!).

We’re still here, and in a world where free audio rules and Spotify could be king, we’ve decided to renew the Live365 radio feed for a further year just to give  you loyal people something programmed to listen to during work time (We still do take requests, jut shout). Apologies for the lack of updates (we’ve been trying harder recently), but we’re still on some crazy upload limiting Vodafone service that makes it almost impossible to do anything of worth on the net (just waiting for it crash halfway through this blog…). Plenty of goodness about though. Definitely feeling the new Phlash & Friends “Deep Electronic Sound LP”, the Floatingpoints “Love Me Like This” finally gets a release (and sells out) on R2 (the Nonsense Dub is sick!), all the beats the One-Handed crew have been putting out and STILL rocking that Q-Tip album (No Feva on the vinyl though, which is damn shame). The London gig at The Roundhouse was mad btw but I guess you already heard that. Plenty of killer disco edits floating about on vinyl too (Loving the more housier of The Revenge‘s recent bits and pieces), some of  which you can’t purchase on MP3 (well I guess the original might be sourced) yet sadly more record shops seem to be going under. Is it now only a matter of time ?  Especially when most of the DJs I’ve caught this year seem to be rocking the Serrato / laptop look. Hmmmm. Still haven’t fully engaged with it. Still need the physical.

Anyhow, to the point of this post. We’ve got a little party coming up after a bit of an enforced Winter break and to be fair, it’s probably the thing I’ve been most excited about for a while. A week on Saturday (25th April), we have one of our favourite bruk/broken/future jazz *delete as appropriate producers guesting for us at a night we’ve called “Future Thinking” (I know a wee bit pretentious, but bear with us) – a man by the name of Dominic Stanton AKA Domu. Due to the wonders of the Internet, you can cop the flyer below.  Nice isn’t it? Props to my man Rob Wilkes from Giant for the design.

Future Thinking w/ special guest Domu (TrebleO/CO-OP) - Saturday 25.04.09

Now over the 5 years of doing this thing – the website, the radio, the occasional nights, I have to admit this man’s tunes  have been residing on too many of my playlists (the only others who’d come close I guess would be Louie Vega and Mark De Clive-Lowe, who both reside in the US, so no chance of a gig there). We caned both his Up and Down (“Last Time”, “Sail Away With Me”) and Return of the Rogue (“Arrival”, “Unfazed”) longplayers, and that’s not to mention his numerous productions, remixes, aliases and partnerships (Yotoko, Bakura to name but two) and general 12″ releases on some of the scene’s most respected labels (“Save It” on 2000Black is STILL the ONE).  So lets just say we’re pretty excited about having him down in London town. New to all this? then check this and this and seek out some education. On the night, expect him to pull out an eclectic selection of tracks ranging from house, to disco, to hip hop and broken beat and just general good music (okay so I’m biased).

Also on the bill for the night, we have another Soul-Identity favourite in the form of JC, label boss of Here & Now Recordings (see previous post for a run down of what we think of him), Myself (Rob Coley, just in case you didn’t know) and Hackney’s secret disco hound Stuart Dennis. Party starts at 9pm-ish and runs through to 3am-ish. The fee to get in? A simple £3 entry before 11pm and just £5 after. Sound good? It’s in the  refurbished basement of Cosmobar, about 10 minutes walk from Old Street tube / or a bus ride. Hope to see you there.

Other news. Well there is a second thing we’ve put together in the Winter months. A little bit about that later but if you can’t wait you may want to head over to our Facebook group or Twitter account (yes just like the entire US Hip Hop community, we also tweet occasionally!) for a few cues. More on that in a week or so.

Thanks for listening / reading.

It’s always appreciated.

So… eh… happy (belated) New Year. Bit of a mad start to 2009 but big thanks to all who passed by our NYE event at Bedroom Bar with the OK-MA lads. A fortnight on its all a bit of a blur, but it was a great party and our guests Scrimshire and Cigarettes and Sunshine absolutely killed it in the back room with an assorted mix of classics and musical delights. Expect more from them (and us) this year.

During the holiday season, we managed to do a bit of website tweaking and you’ve probably noticed by now the new front page, complete with audio player. We’ve been a bit slack on the music side of things as of late, but hopefully we’ll finally get some time to lay down some mixes again. In the meantime, check a little exclusive mix that  our friend JC, label boss of Here and Now Recordings did for us that’s now streaming on the home page. If you wish you can also download it for your Ipod here. Plenty of goodess featured on an old school soul and disco tip (sorry no tracklist but you should be able to piece it together by listening) and if you like what your hear, JC can be found doing his radio show first Thursday of the month on internet station Deep Frequency. Check it out.

Label wise, next up on the roster is “It’s Only Just A Garden”, the lush new single from Chanan Hanspal featuring the vocal talents of Imaani (Incognito) and a killer electronic boogie remix from Yam Who? (also check out their recent Grace Jones remix if you can find it). Cop the MP3 here or here. Alternatively look out for the physical in your local (surviving) record store. Already getting big support from scene players like Domu, Reverso 68, Bugz In the Attic, Faze Action, and Nik Weston from Mukatsuku and of course, us.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here & Now Recordings Launch Party @ Plastic People, September 18 2008

Easy now… while we work on exactly how we top the last party (it was a corker, but as it happens it was the LAST party at that venue), here’s a bonafide soul-identity approved session for your attention. Previous soul-identity music guest and all around music good guy, JC brings a night of Here & Now goodness to one of our favourite (if not favourite) London clubs, Plastic People on September 18th. In attendance on the night will be the man like Yam Who?,  Steve Laviers (Motivators) and of course label boss JC. Anyone who’s caught any of the Here & Now releases, will know what to expect – something in the realm of soulful disco boogie bruk afro latin dance music – just the way we like it. See you on the dancefloor