It's been a busy week since I got back from D.C. and I finally had a minute to record a few tracks to share here. I had a great time out there, got a chance to look at records almost every day of my visit, saw the Earcave in person, and got to meet the Beautiful Swimmers. The cherry on top of the trip was a private show from George Smallwood in his home a few hours before my return flight.

 Som Records is the best shop in D.C. I loaded up a healthy stack of twelve inches including many local go-go funk records that are obviously everywhere in their home town but a bit harder to find here on the west coast. Here are two of my favorite local finds. Master Jam released two singles on local D.C. micro label 2nd To None. "Celebrity Funk" is a cool vocoder instrumental on the one-off DOC label.

Master Jam - Freak With You

Chris Thomas - Celebrity Funk (instrumental)

Like many record collectors it has always been a dream of mine to press something on wax. I have always wanted to contribute to the world of the black crack by putting something in print for anyone to enjoy rather than just repping older hard to find records.
A couple years ago I became good friends with a local collector Tim who during an extended car ride to a record lead told me about his activity playing in several bands growing up in Oakland in the 1980s. After some pestering on my part Tim reluctantly dug up boxes of cassette recordings from this era. I think he was content leaving them as skeletons in the closet but I managed to convince him people still enjoy drum machine soul. Tim got on craigslist and tracked down the same model Tascam Porta-one four track machine we needed to play back the tapes.


Tim played regularly with a band known as Davinity during this time and recorded hours of material from bedroom demos to proper studio tracks. Recording quality is dodgy at times but fortunately they insisted on using only hi bias tapes and generally hit them with a good level. After sharing some of our finds with Sean from Sweater Funk and Andrew at PPU we decided to take the plunge and let some of this see the light of day 20+ years after it was recorded.


So far we have two 45s available featuring our favorite tracks from the Davinity cassette archives. A huge thank you goes to Andrew from PPU who was the inspiration for this project and provided a great deal of help in the process. Peoples Potential is also distributing the records worldwide.


We are very excited to start releasing music for y'all, look for more in the future including a debut from Beat Electric Records in 2012.

download lo-rez samples here
RYSQUE 001 Pierre - Cherri Snow b/w Veronica - So In Love
RYSQUE 003 Tim Tucker - C'Kret b/w Davinity - Fishnets

records available for purchase from EARCAVE (Washington DC), Rush Hour (Europe), and many other fine vendors. or you can email me directly at rysquerecs AT gmail.

It's been a long couple of weeks, I am much too burnt out to formulate a cohesive thought but duty calls and a much overdue tribute to my favorite boogie-funk reissue label is in order. People's Potential Unlimited is the brainchild of Washington DC based record digger Andrew Morgan. Andrew is a top authority on the boogie-funk sound, his specialty is tracking down the original artists behind the very obscure records he sources out. Every release on this label just slays, check out some of the highlights posted below. In order to not piss off any of the artists I had to keep these rips low quality, but that's ok, they are all on wax and pretty damn cheap to purchase directly from PPU.

Cardell Funk Machine - Shoot Your Shot
The Pinch - Shout Out (Instrumental)
Glass Pyramid - Better By The Minute
Midnight Express - Breeze Up (Demo)
Checker Kabb - By My Side