A four-tracker nodding to the Revolutionaries’ late-seventies instrumental EPs out of Maxfield Avenue.
A double whammy of knockout dubs.
First, a head-turning brace for all darker-than-blue massive. A down-to-the-bone version of Pam Hall’s haunted Lovers take on The Stylistics’ Children of the Night; and the startling dub of Junior Moore’s lovely cover of The Isley Brothers’ Voyage to Atlantis. In both the scraps of singing are deadly.
Then two evilous dubs of classic Hopeton Lewis roots, saturated in classic Channel One hard-grooving intensity. Like the opener, never released before now.

Keith cut some sides for JA producers in the early ‘70s, before moving to New York. In the first half of the ‘80s, his Lovebird label released mostly his own productions, like Honey Bee Fantasy… slow-burning, mid-eighties boogie, nervy with a delicious outsider wrongness. None other than Charles Earland plays keys; Canadian singer Ann Marie handles backing vocals.
AM bounces back on the PM, fronting the first incarnation of the Roots Radics, including Blacka and Bingy Bunny from the Morwells. Sweetly fragile, tentative singing over a dreadnought rhythm.
Painstakingly sleeved as per the original.

Gorgeous roots. Seemingly sardonic and above-it-all but utterly trenchant. All the singing is sublime, including the back-up. The gentle nyabinghi percussion and keyboard stabs are beautifully restrained, as Sylvan Morris brings his genius to the mix. Same dub as the original 45. A stone classic. We could listen for days.
Plus the 12 Tribes launch a two-headed-shark attack on the flip, featuring maestro Pablove Black. No less than an instrumental cut to George Beaufort’s insurgent Reaching Our Goal, and a sick synth excursion on the revered Black Star Liner rhythm.

‘It opens with hypnotic, dubwise low-end pressure; then Guess What pushes into Bristol techno territory. Next up the syncopated bass mutations of You’d Never Know; before Swollows Sunshine drifts into electro, ambient melancholy.’

Ace dub-techno steppers, proper Berlin style, by way of Montreal. The opener features Gavsborg at the mic, from Equiknoxx. Thumbs up.

With the all-time, game-changing Hi-Tech Jazz. Crucial.

Freddie in his heyday like this was one of the greatest singers in reggae history.
He’s in soaring, inspirational form here, riding a hard-as-nails Niney rhythm.
The organ-led dub is dazzling. Mark Ernestus from Rhythm & Sound recently opened a set with one of its incarnations, at the already-legendary Open Ground club in Wuppertal.
Both sides, classics.

Clear vinyl.

Ace, classic UK garage.
With the raw, vital, white-label mix.
Ruff.

Ace dubwise techno.