Ben Cornish
@pasty90
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A funk record built like a siege. Nobody understood endurance better than Fela. Every repetition narrows the escape rout
Swamp soul with a jazz musician’s patience. The title is the only thing here that overplays its hand. The real ceremony is in the rhythm section.
Somewhere between Tim Hardin’s introspection and the Left Banke’s baroque melancholy. The covers nod to convention; the originals quietly ignore it.
Country, gospel and hard bop sharing the same front porch. Pearson never plays up the novelty. The seams never show.
The dancefloor is only half the story. Underneath the immaculate songwriting there is flex. No chasing. The groove’s already his.
Karen Dalton’s ache, Evie Sands’ soul. Karen Beth—less haunted than one, less forceful than the other. Earthy, melodic and quietly devotional.
Somewhere between Bitches Brew and the California coast, but with far more light getting in. Latin pulse and spiritual jazz drift in and out of focus. Too warm for the purists, too loose for the virtuosos.
Horace Andy becomes another texture in the landscape, shaped in the echo chambers of King Tubby’s studio. The hand-pulled silk-screen sleeve—limited to around 300 copies—is almost as remarkable as the record.
The hits largely belonged to someone else. The voices, arrangements and sheer joy belong entirely to The Monitors A reminder that Motown’s second string was better than most people’s first.
The greatest British sitcom never made it to television. A celebration of a country’s fading certainties and a critique of the myths built around them. Ray Davies keeps the sentiment honest by never entirely trusting it.
From cool jazz modernism to deep avant-soul to a late-period Stones cameo that steals the entire atmosphere of the song. Sonny Rollins could sound precise, searching, warm or completely untethered — sometimes within the same solo.
This Santa Maria 1st pressing sounds huge. Underneath the chaos and guitar smear there’s still deep soul music happening — bruised, cosmic and oddly tender.
Critics called it a misfire. They were probably right. But there’s something compelling about hearing Motown lose its balance in real time. A beautiful, expensive confusion of soul, psychedelia and executive panic.
Sweet 1st press pick-up in Copenhagen. Cadet-era soul at its richest and most emotionally exact. Half the singers of the next decade are hiding somewhere inside this record.
Halfway between the pub and the picket line. The voice stays steady while the landscape industrialises around it. One of those records that sounds older and more modern every year.
Rice performing the Heimlich Maneuver to keep Mavropanos alive while the ball was mid flight. Gentlemen.
Middling albums with utter masterpieces for opening tracks. Those first two tracks suggest a lost classic. The remainder plays like seasoned professionals trying to maintain a mood they’d already perfected twenty minutes earlier.
Not many records can slip so naturally between Glen Campbell, Gene Clark and Bob Lind. Grey in palette only — warm in temperature, bruised at the edges, and quietly devastating.
Loose enough to breathe, tight enough to swing. British folk-blues rarely sounded this natural.
I could not go to Sweden without bringing a 1st press of this back with me.
First Columbia date, but no pivot in sight. He keeps it close, no grand gestures — the tension does the work.
A close cousin to Diamond Dogs — same year, same orbit — with Bowie in the mix, but leaning fully into glam soul. The sleeve does it no favours, and I still rate it higher.