Jaimie Hodgson delves into the bountiful OMM postbag for tunes to bring the sun out and club bangers to work yourself into a sweaty raving frenzy.
On this dreary summer's day we're warming up with evergreen Jamaican reggae legends Toots And The Maytals. After a staggering 41 years in the game, the Maytals are still making people smile with an increasingly pop-based take on the classic Kingston vibe. Twenty-five albums down the line and the slick rock production on Light Your Light (Universal) is a far cry from their earthy Sixties roots, but they still pack in the sunshine hooks and a couple of fun cover versions.
Next on our stereo is another nostalgia trip: elusive psych-folk songstress Vashti Bunyan, who's seen a tremendous resurgence in credibility. After a string of low profile singles and one now classic album, 1970's Just Another Diamond Day, she disappeared from the public eye, spending the next three decades raising children and animals in Scotland and Ireland. In the past few years the psych-folk revival has dragged Vashti back into the spotlight, culminating in the release of this new singles and demos collection. Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (Fatcat), out 1 October, is full of exquisite, fragile little love songs chartering her brief but influential Sixties career.
With the dancefloor in mind, there's the latest offering from Chicago discomaster Felix Da Housecat. With dance music bounding down an increasingly noisy path, Felix's scrumptiously soulful update on the classic house and disco formula is a breath of fresh air. He's been tinkering with beats since 1989 and his wealth of experience shows, invoking the grooves of Parliament Funkadelic with lushly produced kick drums and classic diva samples. It's on par with his acclaimed debut Kittenz and Thee Glitz, and harks back to the good old days, sounding timeless rather than dated.
A dance album that's very much in the here-and-now is Boys Noize's Oi Oi Oi. A fitting title, Oi Oi Oi is a rowdy surge of throbbing bass lines and distorted synths that'll leaving yearning for bustle of a sweaty club. Boys Noize aka German producer Alex Ridha is one of the key players in dance music's blossoming new electro-mosh parade, threatening to turn dancefloors into limb-flinging danger zones. This debut follows recent efforts from fellow electro-moshers Justice and Digitalism and is arguably the best that the scene has produced, balancing fuzzed-out noise with focused, pumping beats.
