Single Review: “Ready” – Cory Wong and Ben Rector

This track screams summer soul!  Wow!  From the top, guitar virtuoso Cory Wong opens fire with muted guitar playing 16ths although I get the feeling that may be delays, and the guitar sound over that comes in over the top playing the main riff.. I can’t even get my head around it.. it’s clean, it’s …

Single Review: “Away From Here” – Speech Debelle X Baby Sol

Speech Debelle just dropped a beauty of an album, “Sunday Dinner On A Monday” and one of my favourite tracks on it is this one for many reasons.  The warped record playing the chords sets the tone, especially with the crackle. The beat drops in borrowing from afrobeat with the rimshot, kick and shakers.  It’s …

Album Review: “Most Definitely” – Devin Gray. Words: Sammy Stein.

At Platinum Mind we reviewed Devin Gray’s single, ’Pull to Refresh’ when the album was a future vision. Now that vision is here and out on Rataplan Records on 9th June. Firstly, let’s talk about value – twenty-three tracks, twenty-one of them short but all gloriously different. Secondly, let’s talk drums – Devin has amazing …

Single Review: “War Baby” – Tom Robinson

As it’s Tom’s birthday today I decided to review one of his biggest hits.  This song has so much soul, mixing jazzy rhythms with a beautiful Rhodes piano and a saxophone solo – oh don’t forget the crunchy guitars… I got introduced to this song quite late in life, as I was discussing Fresh On …

Single Review: “Drawn To You” – Brapurple & Gabrielle Sey

To Ghana – the motherland – we go for this, and it’s got the taste of suya, jollof rice and an ice cold Fanta in the summer sun with ice dripping down the sides.  In other words this song deserves the chef’s kiss.  Gabrielle Sey and Brapurple join forces on this Gabrielle bringing the soulful …

Single Review: “12 Inches Of Love” – Alice Offley

Alice is back with a track that could burn up the dance floor easily! It’s got a groove for days based around a four on the floor beat, punctuated with timbales – brining in elements of latin rhythms, the basis of which disco in New York was built on in the early 70s. This song …

Blog interview: Sarah Krimson

Hello Sarah, how are you? I’m good thanks 🙂 Congratulations on the release of “Urban Melancholia”, how does it feel? It feels unreal, I’ve been working on this project for over a year and I would have never imagined it being so well received. It’s your second compilation since “Burning London”, what inspired this one? …