Lovely singing by the Hombres over a limber, spaced-out Upsetters rhythm you could listen to for hours. The dub attenuates the political reasoning with cruel brilliance.
Stalag excursion.
His first run-out on the rhythm he later cut for Chopper — another Digikiller reissue.
Characteristically melancholic, wise, masterful singing.
With a bumptious, flirtatious Valentines.
No less than forty-four High Note sides: the original album plus a heap of 45s.
Sonia Pottinger presenting Earth & Stone, Bobby Ellis, Reggae George, The Itals…
Bringing together two Cry Tuff sevens from 1976. (Gimme Gimmie is the same heavyweight rhythm as Prince Far I’s Zion Call, aka Concrete Column.)
Sombre Shaka weapon, with Junjo and the Roots Radics, from the same early-eighties sessions as Police In Helicopter.
Two contrasting, bolshie, try-a-thing dubs, bristling with ideas and energy.
‘Ambulance Dub creeps along like John Carpenter laying down a dubplate special at Firehouse. The Bigger Tutti is full-on, punky-reggae-party steppers.’
Hand-stamped.
Superb, sombre, tautly grooving sufferers, produced by George Woodhouse.
Same singer as Reward, on Channel One. Twin, dread killers.
Utterly genius mid-seventies Upsetters. The great Horse Mouth aka Mad Roy playing melodica (like on his classic Far Beyond for Studio One, where he started out printing labels) and drums (like on War Ina Babylon), and spliffically hymning his local dealer.
With Delroy Butler/Denton from The Silvertones, on the flip.
Outstanding roots by Noel Gray, at High Times in 1982.
Irresistible 1950s mento — singalong tunes, ebulliently performed, over-spilling with scandal, smut and impudence, sex, dancing and booze, word-play, jokes and up-to-the minute social commentary, and general love for life.
It was intended that one of Hudson’s teenage sons would voice the dubs. In the event the Love Joys, Wayne Jarrett, and most inimitably Hudson himself featured at the microphone. Like Wackies, Hudson was a Studio One devotee — ‘I used to hold Don Drummond’s trombone for him so I can be in the studio’ — and the album follows Coxsone’s recent strategy of overdubbing signature rhythms.
The Studio One sides were aimed at the dancefloor; Hudson’s reworks of tracks like Melody Maker are more psychological. Heavy Barrett Brothers rhythms are pitched down and remixed deeper still with reverb, filters and other distortion, and overlaid with new recordings of guitar, percussion, keyboard, voice, often crazily treated.
Originally released in 1981 on the Joint International label, in NYC.
Legendary, strange, compelling music.
Deep and intense, with Augustus Pablo and the Barrett Bros on call, god-like Tubbys mixing, canonical rhythms, Big Youth and Horace Andy in the mix. One of the top five dub albums of all time. Fifty years old!