{"title":"Music With Soul","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"pura-maldad","title":"Pura Maldad","description":"\u003cp\u003e' Funkadelic touring the vast Caribbean coastline of Venezuela, together with Afrosound and Grupo Bota, with endless supplies of Aguardiente and other substances, in a “Back to the future” setting. ' ....?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLola's Dice's debut album is the result of a radical musical transmutation, marked by the phenomenon of massive Venezuelan emigration. The songs contained in \"Pura maldad\" expose the current point of that process with amazing detail. Rhythms that were considered exclusively \"traditional\" and almost untouchable back home (Tamborera, Gaita) get twisted, stretched and pushed beyond any imaginary limit, while being combined with healthy doses of Disco, Funk, Electro, Techno and their Caribbean counterparts, Merengue, Salsa and Compass.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHaving taken their first steps in the key of Funk-Rock, things first took a turn after the leader Javier Bohorquez met Venezuelan producer Alex Figueira (Fumaça Preta, Conjunto Papa Upa, etc) at a show and he handed him a business card. The tropical psychedelic sound Figueira was specialized on spoke immediately to Javier, as it did combine many of the crazy and groovy elements he loved from the most \"out there\" Funk (a la Funkadelic), with the countless Caribbean rhythms he had been exposed to, having grown up in Venezuela.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter the first EP \"Viaje al centro del ritmo\", where everything acquired a decisive tropical tone, a further eccentric exploration of the music of their homeland became inevitable. The subsequent single \"Cacri 'e Playa \/ Sr Cartujo\" clearly showed where things were moving towards.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Pura Maldad” is a true tropical lysergic trip, and while you see vibrant colors and things move in very strange ways, the sun never seizes to shine. Despite its profoundly experimental character, the album proves very useful to anyone in need of getting a party started, maintained or fully blown up, depending at what point of the evening it’s played.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Music With Soul","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50408418050379,"sku":"2026757","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/product_id._1801a808_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726604049"},{"product_id":"fruta-madura","title":"Fruta Madura","description":"\u003cp\u003eImagine a Latin remake of Back to the Future. The mad scientist is Arsenio Rodriguez (the godfather of salsa) and the young student who travels through time with him is Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers). This album can only be described as the perfect soundtrack for that movie that never was.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter the massive buzz generated by his first solo album, Mentallogenic, Alex Figueira got back in the studio to work in a more collective fashion this time, carefully assembling the second album of his largest project to date, Conjunto Papa Upa; a team of 6 musicians, spanning 3 generations of some of the best talent in the Latin and avant-garde scenes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Music With Soul","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50429685596491,"sku":"2206178","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/fruta_madura_cover_high_res_9dadbb15_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726840932"},{"product_id":"juicy-aprende","title":"Juicy \/ Aprende","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn unexpected slice of psychedelic Caribbean jazz, with acoustic piano, steel drum and tripped-out conga solos. The soundtrack of that crazy dream where you hang out with Charles Mingus, Herbie Hancock and Mongo Santamaría, sipping up the juice of a freshly squeezed watermelon, under the palm trees of a beautiful beach in Port of Spain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBuilding on the success of his Fumaca Preta and Conjunto Papa Upa projects, and a stint playing percussion for Altin Gun, Alex Figueira leads his “one-man funk band” motto into uncharted territory. Constantly looking for ways to expand his sonic palette and musical abilities, he takes on the self-imposed challenge of creating a more danceable and decidedly Caribbean approach to jazz. The result, for those familiar with his output, delivers on all fronts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eJuicy\u003c\/i\u003e is groovy, catchy, trippy and leaves you wondering what exactly it is you're listening to. Drop this song at the beginning or end of any session and watch people come to you with a mixture of awe and joy, wondering which record this is. It will equally please casual dancers, obsessive vinyl heads and anybody looking for music that defies classification.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe flip side showcases once again Figueira’s irreverent production style. Imagine Jamaican melodica icon Augustus Pablo, calypso jazz godfather Ciryl Diaz and Brazilian legend Jackson do Pandeiro hanging around barely lit bars of questionable reputation in an unknown city, randomly placed in the extensive Kingston - Salvador da Bahia axis. They meet a group of lifelong skateboarders and receive a stoic sounding piece of advice that lifts their moods significantly: “to learn, you have to fall”. Words repeated incessantly since the dawn of time are delivered here, most likely for the very first time, over a swinging mix of melancholic calypso jazz, traditional forró, roots rockers reggae and guaguancó.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe unlikely mix of Latin American genres gets an unexpected Afro-Cuban twist towards the end and Figueira takes over the mic to speak directly to the listener. “You thought it was instrumental, right? Haha none of that”. Alex explains, “I was here mixing this song and when this part came I thought, what this needs is a little chorus”, emphasizing that it must be a “very tasty” one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLastly, he explains the origin of what he is about to sing, revisiting his childhood in Caracas “when I was a kid, the oldest skaters, those who did all the tricks, used to tell us, “to learn, you have to fall””, before the chorus break out, raising the song’s spiciness to its maximum heat reminding you how essential it is to “learn from your mistakes”.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Music With Soul","offers":[{"title":"Black | 7\"","offer_id":50452759511371,"sku":"1156027","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/826e0256-dc6b-43d2-b8ed-cd73376ef6fd_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727163185"},{"product_id":"mentallogenic","title":"Mentallogenic","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn album that sounds like The Menahan Street Band playing in a tropical jungle, at dawn, right at the point when the first rays of sunlight penetrate the dark depths of the forest. During the 2022 summer of natural disasters, under an unprecedented heatwave, and haunted by news reports of ancient relics, sunken ships, and hunger stones resurfacing as rivers dried-up all-over Europe, Amsterdam based multi-instrumentalist producer Alex Figueira started to hear uncanny metallic vibrations And eerie melodies of untraceable origins, day and night. He recalls nightmares of winged creatures inside timeless structures of Escherian architectures playing cosmic instruments amidst tropical storms\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand acid rains. As the visions came more often, his wife reported that he babbled during his sleep about South American demon Yurupari. Soon, Alex found himself in a sleepless state and decided to cleanse the studio, with hallowed rites and\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe intense burning of Palo Santo. After almost burning the studio down, he turned to his neighbourhood’s most experienced psychic, seeking answers. He was told there were “cosmic entities” trying to manifest a message “too complex for us to understand in this dimension” and the only way he could find peace was to deliver those messages in a decipherable form. It was then he decided to transmute his hallucinations into music, an all-or-nothing cathartic solution.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlex entered a feverish dream, fuelled by the kaleidoscopic motion of the cosmos, ancient meteor showers, and visions of forgotten interstellar South American gods. He remembers very little of the work, but the outcome is this record. Entirely composed, recorded, produced, and mixed in a frenetic nine-day studio stint.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Music With Soul","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50902917939531,"sku":"2005734","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/mentallogenic_promo_simple_9cd52843_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1732795505"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/music-with-soul.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}