Over to Digikiller…
‘Howard ‘Sir Tommy’ Mapp is one of the original guard of New York sound men, playing sound system since 1974. Around a decade after that, he began producing for his newly formed label of the same name. Later in the 1990s he established his own studio, which became a hub of the city’s dancehall scene. In true independent fashion, Tommy covered nearly every aspect of the reggae business himself, like Wackie’s, Jah Life and Philip Smart. We’re proud to finally present the first reissue of the early gems in Tommy’s catalogue and make some more classic New York reggae accessible again. So what better to start with than a new compilation, 100% heaters, culled from long unavailable singles and albums. We cannot recommend this record enough, as Tommy’s early production output mainly falls in two of our most beloved categories — the mid ‘80s sound of Channel 1 as played by the Gifted Roots Band, and the late ‘80s early digital sound. This LP is packed with prime cuts of just such music. Absolutely essential stuff for 1980s reggae heads.’

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.

‘Previously unreleased recordings made over several nights of the Wailers’ West London residency in June 1976, during their Rastaman Vibration tour. Highlights include a transcendent version of Roots, Rock, Reggae, a rarely-performed Bend Down Low, an extended version of Crazy Baldhead, and a thirty-minute encore that incorporates a twelve-minute Get Up, Stand Up.’

‘As deeply rooted in soul’s past as you’d expect, but it never feels self-consciously retro… strikingly raw, racked with very real emotion’ (The Guardian).

‘By turns gleeful, sensitive, urgent and ruminative, this is a brilliant set that plays to the trio’s formidable strengths… Hearteningly delightful contemporary music-making’ (The Guardian).
‘A spare, de-cluttered, étude-like qualitymusic of sometimes unassuming but penetrating emotion and structural focus… full of the detail given to artists with powers of judgment to match the command of their instruments’ (Jazzwise).

‘Tony Williams was barely twenty-three when he put the Lifetime trio together in 1969, only five years past his stint as the engine of the Miles Davis Quintet. Emergency!, the group’s sprawling double-album debut, paired Williams with organist Larry Young and a little-known British guitarist named John McLaughlin, and the record still stands as one of the founding documents of jazz-rock fusion — loud, unruly, ahead of where the rest of the music was standing.
‘The original Polydor LP, mixed by Gene Radick and mastered by Lee Hulko, caught that ferocity on tape but never quite in the grooves; low end swallowed the drums, and the whole thing arrived compressed into something closer to sludge than three musicians clearly having the time of their lives…
‘Mastering engineer Michael Brändli did this thingamajig Reference restoration and set against the 1969 pressing the gap is not subtle. Williams’ drums, once smothered under tape hiss and organ bleed, now hit with real transient snap. His cymbal work—skittering, argumentative, never just keeping time—finally gets the room the LP never gave it. Young’s Hammond pulls apart into distinct registers instead of one low howl, and McLaughlin’s guitar sits up front without the digital harshness that dogged later reissues too…
‘The 1969 LP sounded like a fight recorded from the next room, three musicians throwing punches through plaster. Brändli’s remaster tears the wall down. Nothing about the performance has changed; everything about hearing it has’ (All About Jazz).

Full-on, sex-hungry, hard-grooving, rock-steady, into-the-future electric blues.
Check out Muddy dancing in his last minute on stage. Otis Spann led the closer — torch-carrying verses by Langston Hughes — because the boss was so knackered.
Look at all the people laughing, shouting out, swaying in their deck-chairs… and wonder about Dylan causing such a cataclysmic stink five long years later, on the same stage, going electric the same way (on the same type of Telecaster).

Gasba fire drawn from Ahlem Édition, the Oran-based label founded in 1992 by Abdelkader Haci.
Hypnotic flute melodies laced through hard-grooving, synth-led raï rhythms, heavy drum machine workouts, throbbing basslines, and slow-burning, hyper-soulful witness.
Hotly recommended.