CD from Clocktower.
Originally released in 1980: the final work to emerge from the Black Ark studio, before its permanent destruction, crossing the soundworld of Roast Fish Collie Weed And Cornbread into new hybrids.
Dazzlingly brilliant, pioneering dub from 1975, laden with genius, fresh air, good humour, and strangeness.
Woman’s Dub is astounding, still — a dub of Jimmy Riley doing Bobby Womack’s Woman’s Gotta Have It. ‘She’s gotta know she’s not walking on shaky ground,’ run the lyrics — amidst an awesome musical evocation of the far end of the Richter scale.
Hotly recommended here at HJ for decades.
Stupefying Upsetters genius — splicing together the rhythms of Better Days and Musical Transplant like Doctor Funkenstein himself, whilst Charlie Ace barks at Dinah the missus to get out of bed and pass him his trousers and an axe, there’s a cow-thief in the garden, needs his fingers chopped off.
CD from Doctor Bird.
Trenchant political reasoning over his own giddyingly brilliant production.
From 1978; in the same vein as Bafflin’ Smoke Signal.
Inimitable Upsetters genius.
Accompanied by Misty In Roots, at London’s Matrix Studio, early in 1987. This anniversary issue adds six studio and seven live recordings, all previously unreleased.
Ace, fired-up, new version of Pablo Gad’s classic, anti-colonial, UK-JA sufferers. Tippa from the legendary Saxon sound; the Lovers Rock maestro. Lovely to see these two Londoners sparring together again thirty-plus years after The New Decade session.
Get-loose, gimme-the-mic, basement-session vibes. Nick Manasseh expertly runs the desk.
All together now… ‘When I was a yout I used to bun collie weed in a rizzla, I use to bun it in a rizzla. Now I am a man I jus a burn collie weed in a chalwah, I just a rub it in a chalwah’... Can’t hear you… ‘Do you really wanna know about the half that never been told? Do you really wanna know what appen to our silver an gold ? We buck up on a hard time, we buck up on a hard time.’