The Arts Desk include two BBE releases in their final chart of 2017

Huge thanks to The Arts Desk for including two of our releases in their Christmas 2017 review alongside Pink Floyd, Mariah Carey, ELO, Madness and much more.

Read the full article here.

The Lyman Woodward Organization Saturday Night Special (BBE): Time for some party albums to get things going. According to Paul Bradshaw’s informed biographical essay on the gatefold sleeve of this double, Detroit keysman Lyman Woodward’s various jazz-funkin’ outfits, culminating in The Lyman Woodward Organization, would play some of the roughest joints in an increasingly rough city as the Seventies saw local money haemorrhage as the US car industry bled out. These clubs included places where people would actually be killed on a night out hence, perhaps, the name of his crate digger-friendly 1975 album. It may also be a reason why Woodward’s stew of jazz, funk, disco and Latin, with emphasis on the former two, has something innately soothing deep within most of its grooves. It’s not a frantic album, in other words, but has a considered virtuosity.

The Library Archive Compiled by Mr Thing and Chris Read (BBE): And the dancing can really start with this one. Publishers Boosey & Hawkes’ recorded music library, Cavendish Music, was once used as a depository for tunes available for a fee to TV shows and the like, back in the Sixties and Seventies. Those old enough should imagine the chase music in programmes such as The Sweeney by way of a reference point. DJ doyens Mr Thing and Chris Read have sifted through the collection on our behalf to come up with four sides of bongo-crazed wah-wah and big brass funkiness composed by long forgotten names such as Dennis Farnon, Sam Fonteyn, John Scott and Pete Moore. On photo/info gatefold it’s a heap of Hammond-laced retro instrumental kicks’n’giggles for both the turntablist geek and the drunk, dancin’ lay-person.