Secret Soul Society - Keep The Mystique (2023)

Hell Yeah is delighted to be releasing a new album from South Wales' Secret Soul Society. Keep The Mystique is a 15-track collection of brand new curveball cuts built from lovingly sourced samples that arrives digitally and on a limited edition cassette that will follow in autumn.


The Secret Soul Society is Cal Gibson, who was one-half of Nottingham's deep house and downtempo outfit Neon Heights back in the 2000s. They served up plenty of low-key but classic sounds which Hell Yeah founder Marco has always had a real love. Since then, Gibson has released on Paper Wave Recordings and dropped an album on Slightly Transformed Recordings and co-founded Scruffy Soul Recordings while continuing to collect and play anything from the worlds of jazz, funk, Afro, beats, dub, soul and reggae. The Secret Soul Society digs into these same sound worlds and reworks them into new musical collages with a psychedelic edge, as proven by this new collection.

It kicks off with the intense but slow-motion dub-soul of 'Cards on The Table' feat Sato, twinkling melodies of jazzy downtempo number 'The Island' and leggy indie-disco of 'Searching' before heading to the dance floor with the funky and leftfield sounds of 'Gimmie A Break' and whacked out broken beat weirdness of 'Sugar In My Coffee'.

The vibrant but hard-to-define styles continue with the low slung sleaze of 'Don't Fight the Feeling', whistle-laced and loved-up grooves of 'Tatoo You' and tropical percussive dub of 'Freak Scene.' The second half of the collection explores shimmering piano soul, tripped out cosmic dub, late night downtempo and chugging bongo brilliance.

Every single track on this worldly collection is utterly different from the last - all have unusual musical characters and catchy rhythms and are sure to make an indelible impact wherever they are heard.