Last Sunday, the ill-fated BBC 6 Music broadcast a two-hour special focusing on the legendary Street Sounds label. The special is presented by Dave Pearce, in conversation with the persistently energetic Morgan Khan, who founded Street Sounds in the early 1980s, and is responsible for bringing so much early hip-hop, electro, rap and house music to England. Street Sounds’ seminal Electro series of albums featured heavily in my own life from the mid 1980s, and they’re discussed on the show (around 42 minutes in) alongside the plethora of other releases put out by Street Sounds in their relatively short initial existence (a cursory glance on Discogs reveals just how prolific the label was).
Street Sounds has recently been undergoing a renaissance, starting a new series of ‘Nu Electro’ releases (Vol. 3 comes out soon), as well as a new clothing line (i’m proud to say i’m writing this little article wearing the limited edition Electro tshirt). Even more exciting, though, is Khan’s tantilising statement on the show that the original albums will in due course be re-released on CD and digital download, an answer to the persistent prayers we fans have been making for over two decades. For a long time i’ve been wanting to do an in-depth retrospective of the first fifteen Electro albums, so this may well happen in due course.
Meanwhile, here’s the two-hour special; the full playlist is as follows:
- Raw Silk – Do It To The Music
- Roy Ayers – Running Away
- Candi Staton – You Got The Love
- Fatback Band – I Found Lovin’
- Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel – White Lines (Don’t Do It)
- Masquerade – Set It Off
- Rose Royce – Magic Touch
- Chuck Brown – Bustin’ Loose
- Hashim – Al-Naafiysh
- Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force – Planet Rock
- Joe Smooth – Promised Land
- Todd Terry – Bango (To The Batmobile)
- Stakker – Stakker Humanoid
- DJ Scott La Rock – South Bronx
- The Egyptian Lover – Do U Wanna Get Down [Deb’s Duel Of Legends Mix]
- Dayton – The Sound Of Music
- Cheryl Lynn – Encore
- The Staple Singers – Slippery People
- Class Action – Weekend (Larry Levan Mix)
- Aleem – Get Loose
- Peter Black – My Love Is Free
