Excellent dub set originally released in 1988, based around Tetrack’s classic Let’s Get Started LP, from nearly a decade before. Roomy and reverberating, with synths preferred to melodica.

Classy digi dub from 1987 — the living, but chilled and de-populated Pablo sound-world — with killer dillers like Raggamuffin Year and Seven Seals on the desk.

Cutting his teeth at Impact! with Clive Chin.
The Heptones, Dennis, Swing Easy; an unforgettable lesson in dub, over the killer Ordinary Man rhythm.
‘Leave the studio, sah!’ ‘Leggo dat an hold dis.’ Listen everything.’
Crucial crucial crucial crucial.

Monumental rebel rock from the teenager at Randy’s in 1973, riding the success of Java. The Barrett Brothers, Chinna, Zoot Simms and co on a piece of Upsetters, Santics like Horace’s Problems, Guiding Star… Ever awesome.

Interpretations of the Soul Vendors’ Swing Easy on melodica and clavinet; plus a dub, and a toast by Dillinger. Hot stuff is right.

‘An absolute must,’ as Steve Barker writes in The Wire. ‘The main Attraction is the dubplate mixes of the Jah Shaka power play Jah No Parshall, here retitled Gates Of Zion. One astonishing dub mix features vocals from Prince Mohammed aka George Nooks in his early deejay guise. Chopped from the lyric and dropped into the chasmic dub mix, the phrase ‘heavy as lead’ would have made an apt title.’

Brilliant jazz lyricism, in the style of Kenny Burrell, by the thirty-three-year-old, at an impromptu 1965 session in the Federal Studio, with pianist Leslie Butler, drummer Carl McLeod and bassist Stephen Lauz.

Instrumentals in ska, mento and other Caribbean styles recorded in 1966, at the threshold of rocksteady. The only one of his eight Federal albums to feature ska. Super-fine LP from Dub Store.

Fire! The Federal musical director walks it like he talks it. Blazing horns and jazzy brilliance all round.

The best of Ern’s sixties LPs. A lovely bunch of rocksteady instrumentals, featuring a cool and deadly Summertime, bumping versions of Hold Me Tight and Flamingo, a moody Story Book Children, some bluesy honky-tonk, and the far-eastern stylings of Sling Shot, to close.