KAINA’s Next to the Sun was one of the VMP team’s favorite releases in 2019, as we loved the album’s dedications to KAINA’s native Chicago, and her family and the communities that raised her. Dripping in bright production and buoyed by her brighter voice, Next to the Sun is an album about soldiering on despite it all, and remembering to love who you are and where you came from.
For a limited time, you can obtain the Vinyl Me Please version of this album (pressed at Gotta Groove) on opaque blue vinyl.
Whiskey Basterds’ debut album Redemption on Main St., is now available! Written over the course of three years in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Ojai, CA, it was produced by Ken Eros and April Theriault, recorded and mixed at Eros Creative and Sound, and mastered by Eric Boulanger at The Bakery.
If this 1972 record for the Paula label was the sum total of Dallas, Texas soul man Bobby Patterson’s career output, then he’d still be reckoned a cult figure among R&B fans. In fact, it’s so good that the fact that he went on to cut five other albums and produce artists ranging from Fontella Bass to Chuck Jackson to Little Johnny Taylor almost seems besides the point.
This is a stone soul masterpiece, full of grit and groove, with a breathtaking stylistic breadth stretching from funky soul (“If You Took a Survey”; “How Do You Spell Love”) to romantic soul balladery (“I Get My Groove from You”) to James Brown-style workouts (“Make Sure You Can Handle It”) to socially-conscious, wah wah-drenched commentary (“The Whole Funky World Is a Ghetto”) and all points in between. But what really makes this record mind-blowing is that Patterson wrote all but one song (the one he didn’t write, “Right On Jody,” is an answer song to Johnnie Taylor’s big hit “Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone”). Every soul searcher needs this one!
The Wood Brothers have announced the release of a new studio album ‘Kingdom In My Mind’ due January 24 via Honey Jar/Thirty Tigers. The 11-song collection represents a reckoning of sorts, examining circumstance, mortality and human nature. Finding strength in accepting what lies beyond our control, the material on ‘Kingdom In My Mind’ hones in on the bittersweet beauty that underlies doubt and pain and sadness with vivid character studies and unflinching self-examination. While the lyrics dig deep, the trio draws from across a broad sonic spectrum to create a set of songs that although thoughtful and inward looking is ultimately transportive and effervescent.
DOGHOUSE RECORDS, a classic 90s house label that released some of DERRICK CARTER and JAZZ-N-GROOVE’s earliest tracks is back with this 4 track house EP from Dallas native & DOLFIN RECORDS’ own BEN HIXON. Deep underground house with a touch of Detroit beatdown.
