If you are in London on Saturday be sure to check out this awesome event called Sofrito.  Sofrito is a monthly night of DJs and Live music acroos the Tropical Spectrum as they say.  On May 23rd, Sofrito presents live performances from Karl Hector and the Malcouns, the new Nostaglia 77 project, the Skeleton.  Below explains more of what Sofrito is all about.

What is Sofrito? Sofrito is run by Hugo Mendez  Frankie Francis and, ably assisted by mysterious Mighty Crime Minister and the extra-talented poster-designer Lewis Heriz

Renowned for the legendary Tropical Warehouse parties in London’s East End, Sofrito has brought together musicians and artists from Ghana, Nigeria, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia to celebrate the heaviest sounds from across the Tropical Spectrum.

Sofrito isn’t a worthy “world music” night, it’s somewhere to hear what is - in our opinion - some of the best dance music ever made.

As well as various Warehouse spaces in London and numerous guest spots around the globe, Sofrito events take place at the Jazz Café and Cargo in London. Guests have included Manu Dibango, the Poets of Rhythm, the Souljazz Orchestra, Quantic, Nickodemus and Nappy G (Turntables on the Hudson), Natural Self, Combinacion Atlantica, Nick the Record, Prince Fatty Soundsystem, Nostalgia 77 and many more…

Sofrito also encompasses the sought after “Sofrito Specials” 12″ singles and the ever-changing “Sofrito Allstars” band that has featured members of the Heliocentrics, Quantic Soul Orchestra, Saravah Soul, Osibisa and Boombaya - expect more gigs in 2009!

This boogie gem from Smith Whitaker and Company is extremely rare and expensive. All here for your listening pleasure.

Smith Whitaker and Company - Don't Play No Games with My Love

I discovered this great blog called Heavy in the Streets run by DJ Sorce-1 which features some great interviews with DJs and record collectors such as Cosmo Baker, Rich Medina, Mr. Supreme, and many others. I really dig these interviews because all of the questions involve their stories about digging for records. As you can manage there are some really interesting stories involving reocrds and unicorns. You'll have to read them to find out. DJ Sorce-1 will hopefully be writing some articles for us in the future as well.

We'd like to announce that our very own, Deano Sounds now has a weekly show on Viva Radio called Cultures of Soul.  It's a smorgasbord of Soul, Jazz, Funk, and Disco from around the globe. In the future you will also be treated to interesting documentaries and profiles on some of the most innovative labels, musicians, and DJs.

What's up with this reissue? It's garning lots of attention from Soulstrut and going for crazy prices on ebay.com. The original is a super rare holy grail from Indiana that never shows up on ebay and fetches over  a $1,000. But should a reissue command prices as high as $100? It was repressed by the wonderful people at Jazzman Records on high quality vinyl in limited quantities. For more info check it out at Jazzman Records.

Here we have an afro beat track by William Onyeabor from the album, Atomic Bomb. An afro bomb, Change Your Mind. It's great leftfield afro disco from Nigeria realeased in 1978.

William Onyeabor - Change Your Mind

This time round we've got a brand new artist with no record label and not much information on him. He goes by the name Gamble and he's from LA. We've posted his track here, Bring Me Down which is a great mid tempo synth driven Bowiesque track with soft mellow vocals. Currently he's in Rome working as a photographer.  

 Gamble - Bring Me Down

We've just signed up for Soundcloud, a great new site for distributing music. You can send and receive music. If you'd like to send us new tracks, remixes, and re edits that would be great. You can send us your tracks to our drop boxes at http://soundcloud.com/tothedisco-com/dropbox

 We've posted a fantatstic re-edit by our friends over at the Cosmic Boogie Collective blog by the Bar Kays. The track is She Talks to Me with Her Body and the Liverpool crew do an amazing job with the track building a slow steady grove and developing into the full song.

Bar Kays - She Talks to Me with Her Body (Cosmic Boogie Re Edit)

There is a Bumrocks Compilation coming out called El Bum. Check out this press release below for more info.

"El Bum" is a LP collection of super rare bootlegs and extended dancefloor trips presented by cult website Bumrocks.com.

Pushing the tradition of the mysterious Electric Funky Afro Sound series of LPs, "El Bum" packs 11 tracks spanning the sounds of disco-rock, electro-disco, proto-techno, and balearic onto 1 high quality piece of pirate plastic.

Bootlegs include the highly sought after and impossible to find electronic masterpiece “Endless Race” by Leda (Peter Baumann) and a virtually unknown Italian jam that could be a rock version of “Il Veliero."

Bumrocks cohorts Tako, Hey Convict!, and The Beat Broker contribute tracks too; an edit of Jeanne Shy’s “Night Dancer” as centerpiece, extending the drama of the irresistible bassline and strung-out strings over 6 minutes.

Dick Cheese & Roman Wafers (Perks from PAM) throws down a Yello medley that jacks their most electro hooks into something for when the floor wants to stop dancing and start jumping up and down. 3 never-heard balearic cruisers round out the collection.

The first website of it’s kind, Bumrocks.com has been broadcasting lost classics and breaking tracks 20 years too late since 2004. It’s super minimal presentation won it a cult following with collectors, producers and djs worldwide.

Guest programmers have included Todd Terje, Trevor Jackson, Discocaine, Prins Thomas, Lexx, Cosmo Vitelli, Brennan Green, Tim Sweeney, DJ Ayers, Munk and others."