Mr. Fingers

In the annals of great soul men, Alexander O'Neal stands astride the worlds of smooth soul and modern r&b like a colossus.

This time of year — when late autumn begins giving way to the dawning chill of winter — often takes me back to the year 2001, a swirling vortex of electronic jazz and machine soul.

This music is like Detroit — a complete mistake. It's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator. The subject turns to techno, house and other things...

It's a sprawling selection of 21 shimmering dancefloor dubs from the first half of the 1980s, all lovingly presented in an indispensable 3½ hour anthology.

Picking up where the original Parallax 100 left off, this list represents the next hundred entries in my top 200 records of all time.

I once said that I could write a whole book about this record, so how about a lengthy post to start the ball rolling?

The lovely Sari launches her new music blog Musical Sauce1 with a post on Larry Heard's classic Mr. Fingers tile, Ammnesia.

A few years back, I started a limited series in which I'd post a weekly tune that was locked into the celestial. I called it Deep Space Music.