Piercingly beautiful singing and dazzling guitar-playing.
Rivetingly authentic, rough-hewn sublimity rushes heelster-gowdie through these indelible renditions of classics like Freedom Come All Ye, Fair Flower O’ Northumberland, and the setting of Patrick Kavanagh’s poem On Raglan Road.
The great Dick Gaughan in his prime. Proper rebel music.

Good grief, it’s actually The Chi-Lites, on a John John update of Sleng Teng.

Curator James Blackshaw brings together Espers’ Swedish cellist Helena Espvall, koto virtuoso Chieko Mori, Dutch lute player Josef Van Wissem — along with a track from Blackshaw himself.

A skittering, stop-start, dubwise, vintage rhythm — sounds like Family Man at Studio One — pulsating with submarine sonar.
Al Campbell lights it up 2025-style with a coolly defiant, denunciatory sufferers. Live, dubplate vibes, kicking off with a nod to his hosts in Shepherds Bush, and a quick Orthodox represent represent.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. ‘Babylon them a criminal, Babylon them an animal, Babylon them a conman, Babylon them a ginal.’
Killer diller dub, too, with a stark, reedy dose of the Sugar Bellys.
Crucial bunny. Crunchy and tasty; proper underground vegetable business.
Bim.

Perfect uptempo rock steady from the Gaylad (copping a little British Invasion, a bit late in the day). The flip carries the swing, though: a magnificent horns cut to Delano’s Tell Me Baby, by The Gaysters.

Fired-up, originary African pop, conjuring the Congolese rumba from imported Latin 78s — with thumb pianos, kazoos, banjos, bottles, violins, and irresistible little songs about pimps, dope, clubbing, sex, death.

A moving, lovely, heartfelt tribute, seamlessly combining jazz-funk, soul, gospel, Black Jazz, bebop, Latin, spoken word and co, with palpably higher concerns than genre and market. Released in 1976 on his own imprint by the jazz veteran — sixties cohort of Eric Dolphy, Ray Charles, Donald Byrd and the rest —  alongside the all-time classic If.

With a Nitty Gritty dubplate do-over of Trial And Crosses.