Luminously upful mid-seventies roots.
Scunna’s bro King Tubby dishes up a heavy dub.
Lovely record.
This rare roots outing by the lovers specialist is a sweet, heartfelt tribute to the great JA revolutionary. A Lloyd Parks production, with a proper dub.
Good advice, beautifully delivered by the pair who had appeared as pre-teens ten years earlier in the film Rockers. Later known as Bitter Roots.
An unnerving ride on Yabby You’s almighty Conquering Lion rhythm — a darkly atmospheric tale of pestilence and the dark arts, our kind of Christmas Carol. Crowning a great year for Digikiller, this is essential.
Ace, driving, digital roots, with a lethal dub.
Reggae veteran Dennis Fearon lends a hand.
Rudie will recognise Bobby Sarkie from The Tartans and The Immortals (not to mention his solo roots killer Better World). His singing here is expertly reined in by desolation, numbness and regret, over a hollowed-out, mesmeric rhythm, with some nasty synth-work and nonchalantly brilliant effects on the drums. The vocal cut is more than a minute longer than the version which opens the Jah Son Invasion album with such a flourish; and the mix is different, with more prominent keys, and toned-down bass. It’s previously unreleased, like the dub.
The B-side is booby-trapped with sensational instrumental excursions on Junior Delahaye’s Working Hard For The Rent Man and Jackie Mittoo’s almighty Drum Song, which conclude the same original tape-reel as Over And Over. Rent Rebate features masterful, boppish soprano saxophone-playing by Roland Alphonso, and restrained guitar interjections by Barry Vincent, with a Spanish tang. The superb hand-drumming on Mount Zion is by Ras Menelik; and it’s Mittoo himself on organ (or just maybe Clive Hunt, Wackies can’t quite remember).
Fine roots from 1986, with a dose of Burning Spear in the singing. Produced by the Blackheart Man, favoured by Shaka.
Late-eighties Callo Collins production of the Youth Promotion cohort.
Aka Olive Grant — the same Senya who broke through at Randys in 1974 with Oh Jah Come and Children Of The Ghetto — with The Wailers backing.
The Don in full flight over late-nineties Bunny Gemini. Plus a Yami Bolo, and both dubs.
Gospelised roots, produced by Delroy Collins in the late 1990s, with mixes by the Disciples.
Excellent mid-seventies roots by this singer from Jack Ruby’s Hi Fi.
Scientist, Roots Radics.
The legendary Ras Muffet tuffet from 1979, on Rasheda’s own imprint, from tape.
Shaka ju-ju, and cornerstone of the same lineage of Wolverhampton reggae as Actress’ Rainy Dub.
Killer roots detournement of Georgia Turner‘s dread blues about a New Orleans brothel, to the tune of a seventeenth-century English folk song, by way of Bob Dylan, Nina Simone and The Animals.
Bunny Gale revives another folk song on the flip — Dead Man’s Chest — via The Viceroys’ classic Studio One outing.
More crucial Keith Hudson runnings, courtesy of Dub Store in Tokyo.