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Produced With Love is an extraordinary album from UK legend Joey Negro: a buoyant, life-affirming, disco-inspired album. It's hard to find enough superlatives to describe just how influential and prolific Dave Lee, aka Joey Negro, has been over the last three decades. One of music's major proponents of soulful, disco-tinged, vocal records, and without question instrumental music, is its development and popularization. No-one treats a loop, groove, or hook with as much care and attention as Joey Negro. Throughout his career, disco has been a key ingredient to his sound, and alongside the likes of Nile Rodgers, Daft Punk, Jamiroquai, and Dimitri From Paris, he's one of the few artists to have been keeping the disco fire burning. Produced With Love is only the second ever Joey Negro album to be released, and the first for more than 20 years. And as the electronic music scene threatens to be overrun with bland and forgettable productions, Produced With Love proves that dance music with character still exists. And rather than rely on sampling older records, the overwhelming majority of music is newly recorded. Album opener "Prove That You're Feeling Me", featuring Diane Charlemagne, is without question one of the catchiest and most urgent disco recordings produced in the last decade. Evoking the great Nile Rogers and Chic at their funkiest, it trips along on an exquisite bassline with orchestral strings and Charlemagne's vocal lending the record a truly timeless quality. Joey Negro explains: "Unfortunately, between starting and finishing the project, the supremely talented Diane Charlemagne, the singer/songwriter who I co-wrote many songs with over last ten years, very sadly passed away. We had a great working relationship, which was both fun and honest. Most of my final collaborations with Diane, 'Overnight Sensation', 'Prove That You're Feeling Me' and the partly re-written remake of 'Must Be The Music' are on this album." R&B and house music mainstay Linda Clifford narrates on "Won't Let Go", a deep house cut that celebrates musical escapism, whilst "It's More Fun To Compute" -- an unlikely cover -- is a fully orchestrated disco rework of Dusseldorf's finest. Further highlights include an utterly transformed "Must Be The Music", whilst things get both dubby and jazzy on the Arthur Russell-evoking "Distorting Space Time". Also features: Sacha Williamson, Lifford, Angela Johnson, Horse Meat Disco, The Fatback Band, Melba Moore, The O'Jays, Alex Mills, Julian Crampton, Peven Everett, and Gwen Guthrie.
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