I wrote a few months back that Moods & Grooves had probably the best undiscovered back catalog of any record label in the Midwest.
On hand as Exhibit A is the fourth in a series of reissues over the last year and we still haven’t reached “peak moods”: the represses haven’t touched records from Alton Miller, Theo Parrish, Anthony Shakir (under his Da Sampla alias) and more. Moods & Grooves hasn’t just shown a preternatural inclination for capturing records from future giants of the scene in their early days and their prime. These records for MandG have often been some of their best.
Represented here are two tracks from Moodymann (the 2000 Untitled EP as KDJ; the record featured M&G’s stock labels almost completely devoid of any details) and Rick Wade’s atmospheric but melodic “Thought Process” and “Forever Night” from 1999’s Quantum Expression EP. The latter is a winner on every count – 15 years later almost to the day it dropped, that entire luminescent EP stands out even brighter.
