Who needs various artists’ albums curated by DJs these days if you can make your own playlists that have a certain theme to go by?
Ok, maybe not many people, particularly if those albums are just a haphazard collection of songs with no thematic connection or valid reasons for certain songs to be included.
Yet, what if that collection is done by an experienced, knowledgeable DJ, who has a solid theme behind such a collection, something that would take any given fan probably months or more to put together?
Manchester, England-based DJ Luke Una seems to be something quite right with his collections so that a suave reissue label like Mr. Bongo would decide to let him curate another collection of brooding soul, R&B, and slow dance music from around the world.
It has something to do with both his personal knowledge and experience to make a thematic and cohesive collection such as his second volume titled Luke Una Presents É Soul Cultura Vol. 2.
Una presents us with some excellent choices of new, old, rare, and under-discovered music with, for example, the conscious, street soul fusion gospel of Veronica Mickie’s “Lost Children,” to an excursion into Swiss, psych, progressive rock in the form of Pyranha, then onto the classic Indian music-inspired electronic workout of Andi Otto’s “Bangalore Whispers.”
Yet, the key here is that it all gels perfectly together as if the original intention of the songwriters was for all of them to be put together. And there lies the art of a good compilation like this one from DJ Luke Una.
