— Issue 93 —

Greetings from a snowed in London. Hopefully you’re warm and safe wherever you are in the world, and are ready for a lovely chilled holiday season! As we head towards the end of the year, we are looking at what charities we can get involved in in 2023. If you have any suggestions, or charities close to your heart (preferably music related), please do let us know!

Now, onto the vinyl.

Our Album this month is the debut album from multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer, Hamish Balfour. He has been around as an artist for a good while, having graduated from the Birmingham Conservatoire in 2002. Balfour has had a career that has seen him record and perform alongside a wide variety of notable artists including saxophonist Tenderlonious, the electro-boogie team of Yam Who? and work with jazz-fusion bassist Nim Sadot. “Running Colours,” his first album, has been worth the wait. A lovely mix of influences including funk, late-90s broken beat, jazz-funk and even a sprinkle of electronica mean this is a lovely, lovely listen.

Not much is known about the 12” for this month, but as soon as we heard it, we knew we had to get it for you. The artist is unknown, and all we have are the two track names: “Sunshine Lady” is a lovely, sunny afro disco house banger that should remind you of summer, with the flipside “Manaus” a deeper tribal number that we’ve had on repeat for the last few weeks. Lovely.