The 'good' new releases are drying up a bit so let's go back and resurrect
some releases from the turn of the century. This is a CD/album only
track on 'Wings To Walk This Road' released 2003 from
John Stoddart.
For anyone wondering what 'crossover' is, then this is a perfect example,
although 'technically' it's a bit late date-wise as this is a previously
unreleased track from 1978, but musically it sits right in there.
It was originally on an unreleased Avanti album 'Dottie' which somehow
Grapevine records got hold of and released it as a single in 2004 along with
another track from the album 'House Made For Love' which has more of a modern
soul feel. They also issued the full album on CD in 2003 with additional mixes
of 2 tracks.
Bring It Over Baby
Full of crossover 'wonderfulness', this (for me) has got it all .. the vocals,
the melody, the rhythm, the musicianship. Very hard to pick up nowadays,
as why would anyone want to sell it? If you found one you'd be expected
to pay around three figures for it.
Bring It Over Baby (DJM Re-edit)
If you can live without it on vinyl there is an extended DJM Re-edit
available on BandCamp (21 Apr 2020) (along with a slightly extended version of an album
track 'I Don't Want Nobody') or it's available on CD album for £10.
A superb modern / neo soul tune from 2005 by Swedish group Prominent from
their 3rd album '42 Grams'. Boy ... is this soulful!
I'll take this opportunity to present a few other tracks from the album, with
a 'health warning' that a couple of the tracks contain some 'rapping', but to
me there's rapping and then there's rapping ... if you know what I mean! i.e.
rhythmical rap v ranting rap which is just an unwanted 'noise' to me!
This was their last album. I don't know what happened to them as on the
strength of this album, with at least 4 or 5 good tracks featured here, I
would have thought it was good enough for further releases. I can find no
further releases from them or any of the members of the group, although the
lead singer Petricks Castelo did work on a 2008 Swedish movie:
Leslie - A Star Waiting To Shine.
It would appear that they broke up, or had a sabbatical, for a few years and
then made a comeback with a new single
'The Lights'
in 2013, which I'm afraid is not to my taste as it's typical R&B/Hip-hop
fodder.
Lucky Day
From the same album this one samples snippets of Shalamar's 'A Night To Remember'.
Posting Al Castellana's new album promped me to revisit his
last album from 2016 'Souleidoscopic Luv' and what a good album that is so it's well worth posting for new listeners.
A new album, 'The Right Place To Be', from blue-eyed Italian soulster Al Castellana dropped yesterday (29 Jan
2020) and is his first since 'Souleidoscopic Luv' in 2016. On first listen it sounds promising. The new single 'Let Me Be' is taken from it
following up on 'Love Is Here' from Nov. last year.
Apart from the two singles, other tracks worthy of mention (after a first
listen) are 'Keep On Talking', 'Now I'm Ready' and 'Let Me Throught The
Door', in fact not a single 'duffer' on the album - recommended.
