The long-awaited reissue of Deadly’s 1982 solo LP.
This great saxophonist played with everyone from The Abyssinians through Prince Far-I to Bob Marley. Designed as a showcase record for his unique talents, producer Adrian Sherwood assembled a crack team of his singers and players at the time for this set, including Style Scott, Bim Sherman, George Oban, Lizard Logan, Crucial Tony and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah. Also dropping by is Headley’s fellow Alpha-alumnus Rico Rodriguez.
The CD includes two previously unreleased recordings.

‘Their first collaborative recording: four beautifully recorded excursions, threading crystalline drum-work through a sparkling haze of guitars and electronics.
‘The opener Dessus begins with Reidy’s distinctive just-intonation guitar figures, shimmering over a delicate substratum of Befli’s brushwork and bass drum accents. As in all of Reidy’s recent work, the guitarism evades cliché via unfamiliar tuning and electronic processing. Hanging almost inaudibly in the background for much of the piece, a rush of synthetic tones surges into the foreground to end it. Oben is built from kinetic patterns of picked guitar arpeggios, locking into irregular grooves with Belfi’s drums, which move from elegant rolls and cymbal patter to driving closed hi-hats and explosive rock interjections. Around the traditional instruments and across the stereo field, electronic sounds swarm and swirl, fizzing and popping in a sun-drenched soundscape that at points suggests both vintage analogue synth destruction and glitching harmonies. Alto begins in similar territory but turns proceedings up a notch, eventually settling into a propulsive 6/8 groove of shifting drum accents, manically strummed 12 string acoustic, and burbling synth chords.
‘The B side is dedicated to the fifteen-minute Up, where the strategies adopted on the other pieces are put in the service of a more relaxed, slowly unfolding epic. Anchored by a steady pulse throughout, the piece combines chiming guitars, dubbed-out bass lines and constantly adjusted percussive details into a complex flux of sound. Change is at once so subtle and so ever-present that, at any given moment, the listener can never be entirely sure quite how they got there.’

128 pages… Stories include Makaya McCraven by Ayana Contreras, Sonny Rollins by Ashley Kahn, Amina Claudine Myers by Seymour Wright, Adolphe Sax by Harry Eddy, Ronald Snijders by Mike Bindraban, Puristamo Helsinki pressing plant photo essay by Mathias Foster. Introducing new columnist Mats Gustafsson; plus reviews…