The same super heavyweight rhythm as Open The Gate Bobby Boy and Noel Phillips’ Youth Man… not forgetting the deadly Brixton Incident 12”, by Roy Rankin & Raymond Naptali.
Junior is playful, maybe a little dazed. The dub is killer; cavernous and moody.

Two magnificent, seething sides of rawly militant witness by the Black Morphologist of Dub.
Nuh Skin Up sets his livid, reeling reasoning to a churning, hypnotic Soul Syndicate rhythm, teeming with star-wars bleeps and lasers, and sick, parping synths.
‘The memories of some bad things will never erase… We’re angry. You make us angry.’
Felt We Felt The Strain picks up the pace with no alleviation of hurt and fury. It’s a dubwise steppers, sharpened by Chinna’s guitar, with unheimlich organ; haunted throughout by a kind of swirling white noise in the background, like a tornado of tortured souls.
Long-term Shaka staples in these extended mixes.
Utterly singular, compelling and unmissable; more timely than ever.
‘Nuh skin up’; ‘be serious’.

Fresh, funky and expertly percussive, troubled but warmly engaging — a trio of upful, atmospheric house excursions to mark the debut of this collaboration between Bristol luminaries.
‘Planet Spanner itself is acid-edged, with radiant chords, layers of rolling percussion and psychotropic FX unfurling from a nasty bassline. Things go deeper on the flip in two solo productions, moody and dubbed-out, with tough drums.’
Hand-stamped, in silk-screened sleeves.
Deep Street round three.

A fourth quartet of masked mongrels. First up, a slo-mo heart-melter, spiked with scraps of misty-eyed soul; then Soul Seeker keeps things rolling with swinging 2-step drums and bittersweet vocal snippets. On the flip, the outer limits of the LA beats sound get nasty with foundation dubstep — a mid-tempo slugger from another planet, on a mission to scrunch rude boy’s bass-cones into the dust — before U & I draws the EP to a close, in an anthemic haze of vapour-wave synths and skeletal percussion.

Soulful UK-roots bomb from 1980.

Previously unreleased, unmissable dubwise mixes.

Sensational French-language do-over of the 45 Faybiene had recently cut for Jack Ruby (following up her hit Prophecy), before moving in 1977 from Kingston to Montreal with Joe Cooper (who plays organ on Police & Thieves).
Zonked, sublime and rugged like Half Moon in Toronto, with a crazy whistling effect throughout, and spaced-out dub.
Bim.

Faybiene Miranda was one of a kind — a Joni Mitchell fan from Panama City who co-published with Mutubaruka. Soon after Tropical Energy broke up she toured the UK with Benjamin Zephaniah, reading her poetry. Before her death in 2013 she was living in Brooklyn, amongst Steel Pulse crew.

Superb, sexed-up, Paradise Garage disco fire, produced by Jesse Boyce and Moses Dillard.

Three brilliant re-routings of Detroit machine funk — Moodymann in particular — into deep mid-Atlantic co-minglings with raw, old-school hiphop and house.
Str8 Crooked is clattering, chugging jack, holding something like Paisley soul under the water; Build Back Better Sweatshops is more driving, riven with breakdowns and horror-show vocal samples. With an uptempo downbeat which nonetheless sounds like a tolling bell, the epic, immersive, sixteen-minutes-plus Episcopi Vagantes pulls off the deadly combination of a kind of stifled, timeworn, melodic wistfulness and percussively restless, passing-through urgency.
This is killer dance music, run through with swingeing, parping bass and ruff b-boy drum-machine rhythms: encrusted and detailed, mangled and nervy, but intensely hard-grooving; wired with punk insouciance, edginess, and free spirit.
Bim bim bim.

Driving Shaka murder. Fury and yearning folded into a perfect blend of digital and old-school music-making. A drum-machine and Bagga Walker from Studio One tear up the dub. Complete with rare, ebullient Colarman toast.

‘Channelling the great chordless trios of Sonny Rollins. An authoritative, belting New Cross blues, a feline Mel’s Mood and a stately, serene When You Know; all with a spontaneous immediacy that allows Ireland’s assured compositions to take unexpected directions. The closer Lips boils over in the outro, with the faders left up to capture the vibe.’