Peoples Potential Unlimited

February 19, 2009

Peoples Potential Unlimited

One of my favorite recent finds on the interweb is the oeuvre of DC based Peoples Potential Unlimited, a small 7" only label devoted to re-issuing obscure and private press early 80s funk. Much like the Numero group has made a cottage industry of unearthing several volumes of home made "eccentric soul", PPU mines the Jheri curl synth-laden past and comes up with some great finds.

My favorite so far is the BallPlayers EP, a short collection of laser heavy dance tunes that are supposedly the work of major league baseball players Lenny Randle and Thad Bosley recorded during downtime from their day jobs. My initial reaction was that this was a Clutchy Hopkins style fake backstory but the label insists its true. For good measure I'm also throwing up another cheese funk number by Cruise, a New Orleans based group whose masters were all wiped out during Katrina.

Ballplayers - Univeral Language
Cruise - Crunch

PPU also maintains an online shop called Earcave which sells original pressings of super obscure 7"s of the same era. There are full length high quality mp3 rips of every release they sell so you can be sure whether or not to go ahead with that $100 purchase of that SOFFWARE release. It would be better if it were structured like a blog but with a bit of clicking around you'll find lots of audio.

And since we're paying a bit too much attention to old things on here as of late I also wanted to post something a bit more contemporary, a track by MRR-ADM (2 San Diego based producers) working with Malcom Catto from the Heliocentrics. This untitled track came out on a similarly untitled 10" late last year. Basically a really nice uber-compressed drum workout...