A compilation of rare and unkown tracks to chill on the beach !
On the seafront, Guts and Mambo have put together a 16-track playlist that is hip without being elitist, guided by the highest standards and unwavering principles of sun, escapism, the good life and nothing below 25°C.
Sixteen tracks are stamped on the pages of the record’s passport – boss nova, soul, jazz, latin, afro-funk and tropical -, souvenirs of travels through North and Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean islands.
Intoxicating tunes, radiant rhythms, velveteen vocals: Beach Diggin’ is for sipping through a straw, wiggling your hips and shaking your pelvis to, and it’s made to bring bodies into friction.
Click here to order Beach Diggin’ (includes digital download) !
Choose you favorite format:
– Cd digisleeve with 12 pages booklet 15€ (ships out within 2 days)
– Double LP gatefold printed sleeves with download card 20€ (ships out within 2 days)
– Digital version MP3 320kbits/s 8,99€
– Official Beach Digging T shirt (Mint Blue) + Download Album 20€ (ships out within 2 days)
Une compilation de morceaux rares et inconnu pour se détendre sur la plage!
C’est depuis la plage, paisiblement installés avec en arrière plan sonore le clapotis des vagues, que Guts le producteur exilé à Ibiza et Mambo l’artiste peintre basé à Los Angeles, ont trié les références vinyliques de leur cocktail Beach Digging.
16 titres qui, sur les pages du passeport, seront autant de tampons Bossa Nova, Soul-Jazz, Latin, Afro-funk ou tropical, souvenirs de pérégrinations en Amérique du Nord ou Latine, en Afrique, en Europe ou dans l’archipel des Caraïbes.
Mélodies capiteuses, rythmiques radieuses, voix caressantes, Beach Digging, se sirote à la paille, fait onduler les hanches et vibrer les bassins. Dans un savant travail de rapprochement des corps…
Cliquez ici pour commander Beach Diggin’ (inclut téléchargement digital) !
L’album est disponible dans les formats suivants:
– Cd digisleeve avec livret 12 pages 15€ (expédié sous 2 jours)
– Double LP gatefold avec sous pochette imprimée et carte postale de téléchargement 20€ (expédié sous 2 jours)
– Version MP3 320kbits/s 8,99€
– Official Beach Digging T shirt (Mint Blue) + Download Album 20€ (expédié sous 2 jours)
Guts, a producer exiled in Ibiza, and Mambo, a Los-Angeles-based painter, have been lounging on the shore with the sound of the waves lapping in the background as they sift through the vinyl for their Beach Diggin’ collection. Far, far from the mouldy-smelling, lightless cellars where record hunters usually hang out. Diggin’ disks as others dig beaches, because getting your hands on a good vinyl, its grooves virtually unexplored, is like stumbling on a dazzling expanse of virgin sand.
Guts and Mambo have little time for the idea that Brazilians have to play bossa nova, Cubans must salsa and a Jamaican has to be into reggae. They sniff around the blind spots away from the beaches packed with noisy tourists and come up with Italians who beat out Afro rhythms, West Indians who lay down earth-shaking dub beats, and Trinidadians who unleash funk laced with lots of brass. Not to mention Peruvians, Frenchies and even Spaniards who can recreate the atmosphere of a humid, totally torrid sixties Rio party.
On the seafront, Guts and Mambo have put together a 16-track playlist that is hip without being elitist, guided by the highest standards and unwavering principles of sun, escapism, the good life and nothing below 25°C.
Sixteen tracks are stamped on the pages of the record’s passport – boss nova, soul, jazz, latin, afro-funk and tropical, souvenirs of travels through North and Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean islands.
Intoxicating tunes, radiant rhythms, velveteen vocals: Beach Diggin’ is for sipping through a straw, wiggling your hips and shaking your pelvis to, and it’s made to bring bodies into friction.
01: Talya Ferro – “Cuando caliente el sol” 4:11 (US)
(LP “Look at Me” – MGM Records / 1968)
The solemn opening brass notes announce the rising of the sun, which goes on rising and rising throughout the track’s four minutes and a bit duration. This female solar star is called Talya Ferro. The backing music, a mix of jazz and bossa nova, doesn’t need to up the volume to raise the temperature – Talya’s gentle but scorching vocals are more than enough to send the mercury through the roof. Her friend Gigi Galon suggested she first learn the English translation of the lyrics before putting her all into performing them in Spanish. Time no longer exists, space has warped and our senses are unbound. Sumptuously sensual.
02: Ana Mazzotti – “Agora ou nunca mais” 2:59 (Brazil)
(LP “Ana Mazzotti” – Whatmusic / 1974)
A good Beach Diggin’ compilation must keep returning to Brazil. When the singer Ana Mazzotti teams up with José Roberto Bertrami, the keyboard player of the legendary jazz-funk combo Azymuth, her voice turns into a soft breeze coaxing crystalline sounds out of the black and white keys. A bossa-jazz cocktail, groovy and full of finesse.
03: The Coppers – “Acapulco, Dos de la Tarde” 3:07 (Peru)
(45 rpm – Do Re Mi / 1974)
An unquestionably funky attitude, melodic keyboards that strike the secret chords of our childhood, ethereal female vocals. Acapulco, Dos de la Tarde is as evanescent a musical mystery as The Coppers themselves. Decades of scouring Peru from top to bottom couldn’t turn up even the smallest clue about this band. Yet this track does drop one hint about a beach in Tumbes province in the north of the country on the Panamerican highway. Enough to make it an automatic choice for this Beach Diggin’ selection.
04: Cassiano – “Onda” 7:40 (Brazil)
(LP “Cuban Soul – 18 Kilates” – Polydor / 1976)
Genival Cassiano dos Santos aka Cassiano and his two mates Tim Maia and Hyldon the trident named Godfather de la Soul Carioca. Singer and guitarist Cassiano composed a few hits for Maia, Alcione and Gilberto Gil, but he also recorded a few albums of his own, a languorous blend of soul and funk full of Brazilian nonchalance. A groove that starts when the sun goes down, lasts all night and is only just finishing when the sun peeks above the horizon once more.
05: Merchant – “Instant Funk” (Trinidad)
(LP “Merchant’s Pilgrimage” – Kaisoca Records / 1981)
Orphaned at a young age and then caught up in drugs, shady affairs, prison and then more drugs. Then AIDS. And RIP. Total chaos. Yet in the midst of all these shocks, Dennis Williams Franklyn, the one-man band behind Merchant, learnt to play the guitar by ear along with the art of transcribing the songs he composed in his head for its six strings. He had no training to write or read music, only feel. And here there are brass, percussion, strings and a free bass, while a guitar revolves like a worm screw around a pulsing beat. In sum, a blazing disco-funk construction with something going on on every floor.
06: Agustin Pereyra – “Guayabas” 6:50 (Spain)
(LP “Brasiliana” – Mediterraneo / 1976)
This boss nova track composed by the Argentinian Guillermo Reuters was released on a Spanish label. On the six-string, his compatriot Agustin Pereyra, with Uruguayan Carlos Carli on the skins. For a little under seven minutes, Guayabas takes us on a journey the length and breadth of Latin America to the sound of Brazilian beats, celestial keyboards and flutes that spiral up into the atmosphere. And watch out for the fantastic Fender Rhodes solo at 2’45.
07: Evinha – “Esperar pra ver” 2:08 (Brazil)
(45 rpm – Odeon / 1971)
She turned her back on the comfort and success of her band to discover even greater success as a solo artist. Splitting off from the Trio Esperança, Eva Maria José Correia became Evinha and embarked on a solo adventure without any of the familiar vocal harmonies and with a more soul-funk sound. Guitars and bass threaten a voice that is as refreshing as a cocktail on crushed ice. And cascading brass and strings sweep us along like an Isaac Hayes song.
08: Fabiano Orchestra – “Rastaman Rock” 4:05 (Guadeloupe)
(LP “Butterfly Island” – Franck R. Records / 1978)
A seismic kick and a throbbing bassline that’ll rattle the rum in your glass: even experts swear that Rastaman Rock was cooked up in a sticky, smoky Kingston studio. These guys do come from the Caribbean, but from the island called Guadeloupe. A crew of West Indians and Yanks at the controls of an ambient reggae ship haunted by female vocals. More like a UFO.
09: Willie Lindo – “Midnight” 6:00 (Jamaica)
(45 rpm – Spank Records / 1978)
Willie Lindo left his mark on line-ups like The Professionals and The Aggrovators – the main projects of those two heavyweights of 70s Jamaican music, Joe Gibbs and Bunny Lee – as a guitarist, producer and sound engineer. Swirls of soul rising above a heavy bassline? Nothing unusual there, for Midnight, produced and arranged by Lloyd Chalmers, is a cover of the Walrus of Love Barry White’s Midnight and You.
10: Caetano Veloso – “Olha O Menino” 3:01 (Brazil)
(LP “Bicho” – Philips / 1977)
Languor de rigeur, syrupy rhythms, leisurely vocals and delicious strings; this is pure premium Brazilian nectar. But don’t be fooled by the apparent frivolousness of a bossa singer, especially when impertinence and audacity have taught him over his career to lace his honey with a swig of rock and a shot of psychedelics. Alongside Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben and Tom Zé, Veloso is one of the leading lights of the Tropicalismo movement with its grand artistic ambitions. His participation earned him a spell in jail and attracted censorship and ostracism by Brazilian left-wingers, but it could not crush his fighting spirit.
11: Kenny Cox – “Clap Clap! The Joyful Noise” 9:51 (US)
(“Clap Clap! The Joyful Noise” – Strata Records / 1974)
Kenny Cox is from Detroit, like Eminem and the White Stripes. A Swiss army knife of a musician – pianist, composer, producer of radio broadcasts and Etta James’s musical director – he also ran the short-lived label Strata Records. The best source of inspiration is sometimes to be found right next-door: it was Cox’s three-year-old son who gave him the idea for this delicate bossa groove. The eponymous album was unavailable for many years until its re-release by 180 Proof Records, Amir Abdullah’s label.
12: Nelson Family – “Gimme Love” (Trinidad)
(LP “Nelson Family – B’s Records / 1981)
When Rovert Nelson emigrated to the United States, he didn’t forget to pack the musical influences and heat of his native Trinidad in his luggage. These included the steel band as well as calypso, and his soul version – soca – became part of the island’s musical heritage. He then mixed in some of the shiny, sequined funk that swept the United States in the seventies to create a blend of New York nightclub dancefloors and open-air Caribbean beach parties.
13: Abeti – “Usisilike” 3:05 (Congo)
(LP “Visage” – RCA / 1977)
A rubbery bassline and sophisticated disco/funk production values that would have done George Clinton proud. Olympia, Carnegie Hall, the overture to the Ali/Foreman fight in Zaire: in the 1970s, Europe and the United States was in awe at the woman Bruno Coquatrix called the “Tigress with the Golden Claws”. No woman is a prophet, etc. Too soul, too folk, too disco. The Congolese public, hungry for more traditional sounds, turned its back on Abeti to start with, but a return to the spring of Congolese rumba in the 1980s spelt a sensational and deserved return and she was embraced by her compatriots’ hearts and bodies.
Abeti boum yé!
14: Stanley Cowell – “Travelin’ Man” (US)
(LP “Musa – Ancestral Stream” – Strata-East Records / 1974)
Two pianos, one of them a Fender Rhodes. It’s plugged into the mains and has the conventional 73 keys tickling aluminium strips. The other comes from Africa, where it is known as a likembe, budongo, sanza, kondi or karimba, and is played with the thumbs, which operate strips of metal. Stanley Cowell, the founder of Strata-East Records, brought the two of them together (just the two of them) to create a track that is wonderfully dreamy and escapist, bathed in the light of the sinking sun and the barely perceptible lapping of the waves.
15: Au Bonheur des Dames – “L’Île du Bonheur” 4:31 (France)
(LP Twist – Philips / 1973)
Roulez Bourrès, J’Aime le Beurre and Le Cri du Kangourou: Ramon Pipin’s band have never held back with their absurd songs, dodgy fusions and free adaptations. But their debut album Twist demonstrated a talent for writing genuine love songs with a touch of Brazil about them. The kind that make time stand still for two lovers who feel they’re the only people alive. That’s what they say, anyway.
16: Joe Cruz & the Cruzette – “Love song” 3:09 (Brazil)
(LP “Album 2” – Villar / 1974)
More than just a simple samba-soul track, of which Elza Soares is the master, Amor aventureiro will make you feel like knocking on your neighbours’ door to take them out into the street to dance. Elza Soares’s life from her birth in a Rio favela to young adulthood would have made Oliver Twist look like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. If the first part of her life was a true Brazilian nightmare, everything changed when she won a radio talent show in 1950. From that springboard, she went on to record album after album, crowning a fabulous career with the title of “Best Singer of the Millennium” awarded to her by the BBC in 2000. Being married to Garrincha, the god of football, was not Elza Soares’s only feat of arms. Far from it, very far from it.
bonjour,
je souhaiterais commander le CD (support vrai CD rond brillant et tout) ainsi que le T-shirt. Comment dois-je faire? Merci heavenly sweetness pour distribuer le génie de Guts avec cette compil éclectique et ravissante! :)
bonjour,
le CD et le T shirt sont disponibles sur notre boutique, il suffit de cliquer sur l’onglet Boutique ou shop sur la homepage.
merci
Bonjour je souhaiterai commander le LP, mais il n est plus disponible sur la boutique. Que dois-je faire?
Merci d’avance pour votre réponse!
sorry sold out.
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