Studio One activist Sugar Minott’s favourite LP of all time.
A stone-classic mixture of foundational rhythms, peerless rocksteady lovers, and songs with the political concerns of the roots reggae to come.
Killer after killer. An absolute must.

This is a blast. From 1996, but summoning the fervour of his early seventies classics, Pharaoh sparks off kora, and high-life, and various African rhythms. The dazzling lineup includes Foday Musa Suso, Michael White, keyboardist Bill Henderson, Bernie Worrell, Charnett Moffett, and Hamid Drake.

Recorded live in Paris in 1994 and New York City in 1995. The band includes Idris Muhammad, Manolo Badrena, and George Coleman. Beautifully constructed, grooving, percussive versions of a tasty mixture of standards and originals.

His first LP, from 1980. Al Campbell productions recorded with Sly & Robbie at Channel One; mixed by the hubristic teenager at King Tubby’s. Great stuff… but a non-scientific title.

Yarghul player Atef Swaitat and singer Abu Ali are popular Bedouin wedding musicians extending long family traditions in Jenin and the north of historic Palestine. This stomping, swirling, surging, precious music was recorded at ceremonies across the Galilee throughout the 1970s.
It’s exhilarating, giddying, and immersive.
Tiny run.

Originally released in 1981, Mr. Circle’s Thi Nam should really have been recognised decades ago as a jazz dance classic. A beautiful example of European jazz fusion at its most sophisticated and optimistic, the album is immersed in the sonics and rhythms of pan-Latin fusion and Brazilian samba, but with one foot in the upful jazz fusion exemplified by Roy Ayers or the Mighty Ryeders.
Taking inspiration from Ursula Dudziak, Flora Purim, and Norma Winstone, singer Monika Linges uses the crystalline tone of her voice as an instrument within the ensemble. The LP is built around the interaction of her vocalising with bandleader Mikesch van Grümmer’s keyboard versatility, all underpinned by the surging Brazilian rhythms laid down by drummer Gerd Breuer and percussionist Ponda O’Bryan.
The result is a unique set of sunlit, Brazilian-inspired jazz fusion. Aimed squarely at the feet throughout, the album kicks off with a double whammy: the funky title track, followed by. the percussion-rich Juntos. The long form Suka begins with a shimmering intro before taking flight halfway through into an urgent jazz samba with Linges’ vocals to the fore. Featuring the vocals of Bill Ramsay, Tides is another driving jazz-dancer with a Brazilian twist, while the summery, propulsive Schoch-Schach features virtuosic interplay between Linges and alto saxophone.

Phil Pratt productions, 1972-1974; Sunshots recorded at Channel One, Black Ark, Dynamic Sound and Randy’s Studio 17, with house engineers Ernest Hoo Kim, Lee Perry, Carlton Lee and Errol Thompson at the helm, and backing by Sly & Robbie, Family Man, Chinna, and co, aka Soul Syndicate. Check the versions of Money Money Money and I Don’t Want To Be Outside.

Our favourite Santana LP. So much to enjoy besides the dazzling guitarism of Carlos Santana — channeling John Coltrane — and John McLaughlin.
It’s book-ended by contributions from Alice Coltrane. The stunning opener is a mellotron version of Going Home, her adaptation of a theme from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, which she first recorded for the album Lord Of Lords. Alice plays piano and Farfisa organ. And to close, the title track re-works a tune from JC’s Kulu Se Mama, with Alice on piano here.
Percussionist Jose Chepito Areas chips in his perfect Samba de Sausalito, with bass-playing by Doug Rauch, and keys by Tom Coster, both superb, and Tony Smith from Malo behind the drum-kit.
Later on, the one and only Flora Purim drops by, magnificently lighting up another samba, Yours Is The Light.
And none other than Leon Thomas had just joined. He duets beautifully with Wendy Haas on a breezy jazz-funk version of Love, Devotion & Surrender; he’s back for full-throated yodelling on When I Look Into Your Eyes, with fine flute-playing by Joe Farrell, and some tasty funk to close; and he’s wonderful on the bubbling Light Of Life, riding a striking strings arrangement by Greg Adams from Tower Of Power, with echoes of CTI.

‘In an age when any old modal groove with a tambura drone pasted on is marketed as spiritual jazz, Kingsport, Tennessee born Zoh Amba is the real deal…
‘Opening track Fruit Gathering is a brief aubade to the Holy Spirit, weeping with a tremulous vulnerability recalling Ayler at his most tender and melodic… On the album’s more expansive tunes, her quartet plugs into the tumultuous swells and raging energy of late 1960s US free jazz exemplified by players such as Frank Wright and Noah Howard, which built on the intensity of John Coltrane’s later, spiritually driven exhortations. Here, Amba pushes past low, guttural blasts to altissimo shrieks and the screaming multiphonics pioneered by Pharaoh Sanders during his tenure with Coltrane.
‘On Champa Flower, Amba connects with her Tennessee roots, picking and strumming at an acoustic guitar while cymbals shimmer and bass throbs. Joining the dots between folk, American primitive, pastoral psychedelia and 2000s free folk, she proposes an alternative living continuum of American devotional music. Most affecting, though, are the three solo meditations on which she plays piano with her right hand and sax with her left. Captured in lo-fi on a Zoom recorder, and ending abruptly as though suddenly out of batteries, they’re intimate glimpses of a soul in motion’ (Daniel Spicer, The Wire).

Murder.
Gritty T++ action — twitching and itching, propulsive and dread — with Gavsborg from Equiknoxx at the mic, sounding sexually fucked.
Ace dub, too.

The African Brothers in full effect. Barry Brown does anthemic justice to this killer song, written by Tony Tuff; produced by Sugar Minott. The reasoning is bang on the money, over a lovely rhythm. The deadly dub is by Scientist, at Tubby’s. It’s a must.