Pacific Express
Expressions

Two years after an acclaimed first album, Al Sunny and Favorite Recordings proudly present Planets, carrying on their collaboration and bringing it to another level.Al Sunny is a young and talented singer/musician/composer emerging from the French soul music scene. During his conservatory studies, he refined his knowledge and confirmed his desire to write and compose. He quickly matured the music that he truly loves, inspired by artists such as Tim Maia, America, Al Green, and Al Jarreau. Giving birth to the majority of his compositions through his guitar, he always seeks to bring his songs’ melody to the forefront. During his studies he kept experiencing live performing on different scenes and confirmed his choice for a musical career, while also meeting many brilliant musicians, including Florian Pellissier, who later introduced him to Pascal Rioux and Favorite Recordings.It resulted in 2017 in Time to Decide release, a dazzling first album establishing Al Sunny’s music and writing style, looking towards the 70s and 80s Westcoast movement, infused with Blue-Eyed-Soul, Pop and Folk flavors. Built on the same influences, Planets is made of 8 new compositions (including a CD and digital bonus), and is clearly a continuation of its cadet, asserting Al Sunny’s talent and singing skills.Fully recorded live and analogic in Paris, this new album also stands out by an impressive level of production, faithful to some classics of the genre. Mixing catchy melodies, soulful vocals, warm and heavy bass, strong beat and beautiful guitars and keyboards harmonies, Planets just perfectly meets the AOR and Modern-Soul golden era standards.

After the release of Brazilian Disco Boogie Sounds (FVR098), Favorite Recordings follows-up, this time focusing on its homeland language.Helped by a close connoisseur friend, DJ and collector Charles Maurice presents a fine selection of what he thinks represent best the amazing energy of this specific movement and period. With 10 rare titles, all produced between 1975 and 1984, he shows a perfect picture of what you could find in French record stores at that time;On one hand, tracks by Overdrive, Marché Noir, Didier Makaga or France-Lise, were produced by underground artists and labels from the French Caribbean and African community and also filled with the raw spirit of this Tropical stamping. On the other hand, tracks by Beckie Bell, Kelly, Le Club, or Bernard Guyvan, were released by major labels such as Trëma, Carrere, Disques Vogue, or Pathé Marconi, thanks to confirmed independent producers, acting not only in France, but also in Canada and the US.Today, Favorite Recordings and Charles Maurice are very proud to shed some light again on these gems, and hopefully offer them a new life on your turntable.

Magic Source is a project led by producer Björn Wagner (The Mighty Mocambos, Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, Mocambo Records), who is renowned for creating an authentic and hard-hitting raw funk sound. Following a few acclaimed single releases on Favorite Recordings over the past few years, the French label deeply wanted to collaborate further with the German combo, for a special and exclusive project bringing their music on new paths. This new project is a step towards a new style: Analog-Electronica, or so called Cosmic-Disco sound.Recorded on a 16-track reel-to-reel tape, EARTHRISING combines raw unedited live band recording, with the refined production aesthetics of the Disco era, including the use of vintage synthesizers, group chants and processed acoustic percussions, for an organic club feeling. While maintaining an un-edited, but highly hypnotic four-on-the-floor groove, Magic Source leaves the old beaten track of cheesy Disco-Pop and overheard Dance classics.The music is an unusual and surprisingly coherent mixture: Earthrising unites rootsy Afro elements (such as almost tribal chants, percussions and a funky rhythm section), with sci-fi score soundscapes (such as ethereal synthesizers, Theremin and space echo and miniature instruments) to an irresistibly grooving beat extravaganza."Cosmic music" was known exclusively in the region of north Italy, Austria, and southern Bavaria until recent. Originally an eclectic DJ mixing style that evolved in the late 70s, it combined Disco, Ethno groove fragments, Electro, Afrobeat, Dub, Italo, Funk and Exotica weirdness to a trancy and danceable turntable symphony.Magic Source creates its very own all-live version of Cosmic. Though you will rarely hear anything similar from any other band, there's hardly an eclectic style that sounds more natural than the wonderful that is Earthrising.

The debut album by musician and producer GO.SOUL.MAP. is a little gem in which pop and soul intersect and the clichés between mainstream and underground leap. A sexy and pensive nocturnal journey, immersed in thirteen songs between soft bass and space disco trips, with the voice of London-based Derane Obika of Living Sounds.The selection of songs in this album were made with the hope to bring the listener to deep thought, the lyrics and melodies seamlessly married to tracks that drive the listener's emotions.Produced, written and performed by Derane and Salvo, they came together by chance and were inspired to make the album making sure to balance the sound between the Lyrics, Melody and Music to insure that not only the songs are heard but the experience remembered and both spirit and soul are touched. The album is truly "Music From The Heart" Behind the alias GO.SOUL.MAP. hides one of the most authentic and purest talents of the current Catania music scene. Of which, moreover, under other guises and names, he has been an indispensable pillar for over a decade. An artist of immediate sensitivity, not only artistic. His training is fairly canonical: as a child, he studied piano. From there, as if following the movements of concentric circles, the passion for synths, drum machines, the world of samples and the recording studio. Above all, an uncommon ability to breathe in music. Accepted and found without prejudice, but always with the need to reveal a distinctive track, a signature. Touring between bars, streets, concerts and clubbing. An experience very consistent with the subject matter of this disc. Which is, in fact, the debut of a non-rookie. An ambitious record, because it possesses a sound that is as sexy as it is thoughtful and a writing style, exemplary, that lies on that borderline that, in the stereotype, defines underground and mainstream. Fields that instead it crosses naturally and between which it moves without any particular problems. After all, the music comes not from the malice of the intellect but from the nuances, tender or vehement, of naivety.Peaceful Sound For Broken Minds is a pop record, pop soul, of modern urban pop. Yes, labels, even in the sense of tags, are definitely that. Of course, it is the way in which ideas are rendered that makes the difference. The record is about the need to find one's peace, but it is the fall that it shows and not the landing. With honesty and, above all, style. That is, mastery of means and an important file work with which to decline that therapeutic soul pain in which his songs are immersed. We wait for hours more, the initial Fall Into The Flame and I Am Believe seem to tell us from there we move on. Hold The Line is where trip hop forgets itself, immersing itself, to the point of blurring, with the retro atmospheres of someone like Curtis Harding. Pushing has a space disco cadence that, more pronounced, we also find in the lunar expedition sound of Watergate. The exotic visions of Back In Underwater, between the stardust of Air and the innocence of Plone, become more jazzy in Cat With Camera. Just as in the urban streaks of Don't You Worry, which in upbeat mode would sound like a great reggae song, or Are U Ready, or in the disco funk of Right Of Me, the soulful accent of Derane Obika of Living Sounds emerges, a Londoner of Nigerian origin who grew up listening to gospel, Prince and Stevie Wonder, whose voice guides us through the songs of Peacefull Sound For Broken Minds. Which is a new point for that work of redefining the standards of pop today that Space Echo is doing. Throwing the clock overboard, because the time it wants to capture is nothing more than the movement of its hands.

This is the debut album from the Nancy-based quartet NCY Milky Band.The four musicians deliver unique jazz experiments at the crossroads of 70's french groove and modern electronica. The album covers a wide range of moods, switching from cheerful anthems with goofy synths to slow jams in which the saxophone breezes a deep feeling of nostalgia. With Burn’IN, NCY Milky Band are bringing a refreshing and original touch to the upcoming french jazz scene.

Voilaaa is one of the many projects led and produced by Bruno “Patchworks” Hovart, who’s proven over the past 15 years, his place amongst the finest producers of groove music in all genres.This time exploring the wide spectrum of the African and Tropical Disco scene, he received a massive international support for Voilaaa’s first album, On te l’avait dit, released late 2015 on Favorite Recordings.Following to that success and pursuing the same direction combining of the festive, yet sometime futile nature of Disco, and the instinctive, deep, sometimes rough nature of African music, Voilaaa’s now presenting its 2nd efforts, Des Promesses.The 13 tracks of the album are again up to expectations, and Voilaaa has not finished feeding international dancefloors with heavy Afro-Disco music. Alongside Bruno at the production, singers Pat Kalla and Sir Jean are back providing their carefree lyrics and Afro vibes, and Senegalese artist Doctor Lass comes to extend the team, with 3 brilliant titles, including a great Funky cover of the classic “Mandjou” by Salif Keita and Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux..