Monkeyboxing

Before their new long player drops on 6 November, there’s just time for Melbourne’s most famous funk outfit to squeeze out a third and final single and that’s this one – On & On featuring Reginald AK.

It’s all about the instrumental midtempo funk on latest single Drummer XXX from The Winston Brothers.

Can we call The Allergies the jewel in Jalapeno Records’ crown yet?

As years go, if 2026 were a treasure chest and new early reggae-style releases were the contents, said chest would be positively overflowing.

Taiwanese ‘Soulful Gent’ Yufu channels the sound of early 70s Stateside soul on new single Side Effects May Include by way of a follow-up to, and coda for, recent debut LP Heal Me Good, lyrically considering the effects of ‘lurve’ on a man.

A second slice of heavyweight hiphop on the Little Beat More label this autumn (following Whatafunk’s Hood Thangs-featuring Unlearn The World) is this brief (at just less than two minutes long) but nonetheless devastating banger Dr Cumbia featuring the in…

It’s not immediately clear why European producers (especially these from the UK and France) should fly the flag of boom-bap hip-hop more than stateside ones in the decades since boom-bap ceased to be the mainstream rhythm pattern of hip-hop, but fly it mo…

Combining forces for a fourth long player entitled A Day Of Unrest, Eleven 76 (a.k.a Paul Elliott and Dan Smith) once more venture back half a century and more to the soulful library sounds of 60s/70s stateside cop-shows and Italian giallo movies.

The Rayvelles return with a new 45 and find the overlap between their more cinematic sounds and lowrider soul.

Berry Geordie strikes again!

Just out, Hood Thangs finds Whatafunk adding to the rich bonanza of boom-bap hip-hop dropping this autumn.

Roots Organisation, aDUBta and The Black Oak Roots Allstars combine swing-era horns-rich melodies with rocksteady riddims on a full LP shortly entitled Caribbean Serenade.

The Break Cracker follows his previous Latin-flavoured release on Echo Edits with straight funky and jazzy business this time around.

Aesop Rock & Blockhead continue their long-held partnership and are shortly to release a new LP entitled Trouble Mountain.

The second single this year from Hamburg-based funk outfit The Winston Brothers is Get On Down and while it finds them firmly in the instrumental funk territory of its predecessor Rolling, it is markedly more uptempo.

Breakbeat Paradise continues to drop funky fire on the label’s vinyl 7″ series Toxic Funk and the latest one sees Umbo in the driving seat again with two righteous edits of old funk/soul cuts.

Ask anyone to name two of Missy Elliott’s biggest cuts and they’ll more than likely name the tracks Get Ur Freak On and Work It – both of which will turn 25 (!)

Us3 drop a third single prior to the release of new album Snap, Crackle & Bop in the shape of Have Great Day which, like its predecessors features emcee Akil Dasan.

You can’t not love a track called Voodoo Cobra, can you?

A little less than a month since the debut single by F-Spot Records kingpin Cecilio (a.k.a.

The Allergies go deep on their next single, Lost My Soul with Bristol emcee-duo HybridMP & KAI.

Boca 45 might have retired (he claims!)

Rocafort Records follow their reissue of Jesús Caunedo’s classic 1975 LP Fire & Sugar earlier in the year with a 45 featuring two cuts taken from it.

Ups – the second album by ATA Records’ The Flying Hats is imminent.

J.Dynamite follows previous single Re-education with new one Sables Du Temps.

Followers of psych-funk over the last decade and more will know that releases by Swiss band Kind & Kinky are like comets – few and far between but always impress when they arrive.

The first new material from Krash Slaughta since last autumn finds our man dropping a tuff 45 featuring two dope ATCQ remixes.

For a brief time in the early 80s, cinema was awash with sword and sorcery flicks – some of which were so spectacularly bad they made absolute stinkers like Hawk The Slayer or The Sword & The Sorceror look like the works of Andrei Tarkovsky.

The fertile cross-Atlantic collaboration between Harlem soul man Carlton Jumel Smith and The Rayvelles bears new fruit with the arrival of new Funk Night Records 45 “C” Plays It Cool b/w Tumbling Down.

It’s always worth paying attention when DJP drops material and this latest brace of remixes for Breakbeat Paradise’s Toxic Funk series merely reinforces the fact.

Brother Wallace’s first new release since his debut long player Electric Love dropped in May is rousing new soul single Honey.