Acid Jazz Originals

News from the Acid Jazz Records Site

This year sees Acid Jazz celebrate its’ 20th anniversary – and with a unique tie-up with reissue gurus Ace and their BGP label we are bringing out a series of extended versions of classic Acid Jazz albums, as well as a series of exclusive compilations charting the label’s greatest moments.

Already available are “1987” a round up of the James Taylor Quartet’s first year of recording, making available for the first time on 1 CD their “Mission Impossible” and “Moneyspyder” LPs, which includes their indie number one, and inspiration for the club “Blow Up”.

The 2nd release is Mother Earth’s seminal 1994 LP “People Tree”. This has been reissued on a 2CD set featuring on 1 disc the original CD including such classics as ‘Jesse’ and ‘Apple Green’, whilst the second disc rounds up b-sides, out-takes and alternate versions, including the achingly beautiful acoustic version of ‘Jesse’.

The Brand New Heavies self titled debut, was a critical moment in the label’s history and its deluxe reissue features everything that was recorded for that album for the very first time on one LP. Sounding better than ever and full to the brim of brit soul classics such as ‘Never Stop’, ‘Dream Come True’ and ‘Stay This Way’, it highlights how soul label Acid Jazz was. A point reiterated in our final release to date: “Snowboy’s Soul Spectacular’ a compilation of soul sides recorded by the man best known as the UK’s leading Latin percussionist. In the 90s he recorded an amazing selection of soul and funk singles, and they are gathered together here for the first time on one disc.

Also available is the first of a series of compilations that we will be producing charting the history of the label and the scene that spawned it. ‘Totally Wired and Other Illicit Grooves’ has a look at the early day of the Acid Jazz scene and includes club classics by the likes of Galliano, the Brand New Heavies and Galliano as well as the first ever CD issue of King Truman’s ‘Like A Gun’ a Paul Weller side project which was withdrawn within days of its 12 inch release in 1988, and has been unavailable since.

The next year will see further releases by the JTQ, Mother Earth and Emperor’s New Clothes as well as the definitive AJ best of to celebrate two decades of one of the UK’s greatest independent labels.
Posted by aj at 6:40 PM
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

What is Acid Jazz?

Acid jazz (also known as club jazz) is a musical genre that combines elements of soul music, funk, disco, particularly looping beats and modal harmony. It developed over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance/pop music.

The compositions of groups such as The Brand New Heavies and Incognito often feature chord structures usually associated with Jazz music. The Heavies in particular were known in their early years for beginning their songs as catchy pop and rapidly steering them into jazz territory before "resolving" the composition and thus not losing any pop listeners but successfully "exposing" them to jazz elements in "baby steps".

The acid jazz "movement" is also seen as a "revival" of jazz-funk or jazz fusion or soul jazz by leading DJs such as Norman Jay or Gilles Peterson or Patrick Forge, also known as "rare groove crate diggers".