Isabelle Antena

title:: Easy Does It
label:: LTM

Apparently, this is Isabelle Antena's first full purely bossa nova album. It comes complete with covers of Henry Mancini and Tom Jobim songs.

This is an extremely happy record. It is the work of a European who has fully assimilated the bossa nova sound.

Abe Duque

title:: So Underground It Hurts
label:: International DeeJay Gigolo Records

Abe Duque has been releasing a slew of 12 inch singles on his own label called Abe Duque Records and releasing music under other names like Kirlian, as well as his work as a producer and remixer.

So Undergound It Hurts is an album released on both his own label and the International Deejay Gigolo Records which ups the ante with songs from those hard to find 12 inch singles plus some more for a full and tasty 13 track cd.

Eccentric Soul: the Bandit Label

various artists
label:: Numero Group

The Eccentric Soul series on the Numero Group label continues with a spotlight on the Bandit Label, a little known independent soul label out of Chicago that existed between 1969 and 1981.

The Bandit label was a small label run out of the house of Arrow Brown and included such talent as Brown's young son Altyrone Deno Brown (who was 7 at the time and a young Michael Jackson wannabe) and the Majestic Arrows (a vocal harmony group who were the only artists to release an entire - highly sought after - album on the Bandit label).

The Pretty Things

title:: Emotions
label:: Snapper Records

The Pretty Things 3rd album, originally released in may of 1967, is one that they themselves hate, even to this day.

From the start, it was to be a departure from the raucous r&b sounds of the first two albums, what with the pretties developing their songwriting skills and beginning to write more and more lyrics about the swinging London scene in which they lived.