Author: John-Paul Shiver

Funk Factory Be With Records Originally released in 1975 as a response to the falsely assumed notion that Eastern European musicians could not come close to touching the funk, a thought briefly held by some American contemporaries at the time, Michal Urbaniak assembled a group of Polish musicians and coupled them with a contemporary American rhythm section of smoking guns, and produced a space-laced jazz fusion album that gained legend and notoriety in the oncoming decades. Funk Factory, just re-issued on 180 gm by Be With Records last month, consisted of Urbaniak on violin, vocalist Urszula Dudziak, Accomplished polish musicians…

Betty Davis The Columbia Years 1968-1969 Light In The Attic Records There is an undeniable artery of freak show dystopian carnival barker type energy that powers “Political Man,” a Cream cover, from Betty Davis: The Columbia Years 1968-1969, featuring jazz and rock musicians Billy Cox, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Mitch Mitchell, Wayne Shorter, and Larry Young. This version, equipped with that dark sparkle funk mystique a la The Doors, is the closest window we have to understanding the direction in sound, grit, and attitude Betty Davis would gravitate towards later on in the 1970’s with “Betty Davis” and “They Say…

Nite-Funk Nite-Funk EP Glydezone Records Ramona Gonzalez and Damon Riddick, collectively know as Nite-Funk, authenticated their time spent working with other record labels on previous projects, eliminating them in 2016. Both of these Los Angeles-based musicians, skilled producers in their own right yet intelligently picky when collaborating with others, felt that their individual projects needed a return to an unfettered, singular sound. Gonzalez, who performs and records under the name Nite-Jewel, just last month released her third full-length release on her own Gloriette Records imprint. The album title, “Liquid Cool,” was also a term she used to describe the sound…

Fovere TOKiMONSTA Young Art Here in 2016 there is still a nasty double standard that resides in the field of electronic music. The EDM category, which is flush with white male producers waving their hands in the air while playing multi-million dollar festivals around the world, would have you hope that all genders and races of producers, performers and Dj’s could inhabit that space. I mean it only makes sense, right? EDM being an attenuated derivative of disco, house, soul, jazz, electro and techno. all musical forms originiating from disenfranchised communities that founded their own space, on the fringes. Because…

Bill Laswell, producer, musician and record label manager, has been at the center and outer fringes of shaping contemporary American music over the last three decades. His penchant for taking chances, and doing what has not been done before has carved a uniquely successful, and non-traditional cannon of work. John Zorn, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Rammellzee, Mick Jagger, Material, Praxis, Pharoah Sanders, DJ Cheb i Sabbah, Sonny Sharrock, Fab Five Freddy, Nona Hendrix, Motorhead, Bernie Worrell, Eddie Hazell, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Bootsy Collins,  DJ Krush, Afrika Bambaataa, Lou Reed, Maceo Parker, The Ramones, Peter Gabriel and Herbie Hancock are…