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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.
Ace dubwise techno.
‘Two tracks from early 70s Los Angeles, around the time of his eponymous first LP. Say You is a superb updating of the Monitors’ harmony hit from 1965, given the distinctively sensitive McNeir treatment. I’m Sorry is a self-penned slow-burner that builds a perfect dancefloor beat.’
‘It’s always summer somewhere, but especially so wherever Cheryl Glasgow’s carefree clubber Glued To The Spot gets a spin. An absolute ear-worm from the opening strums, Glasgow’s Sade-adjacent, jazz vocalese sweeps into a warm up-tempo groove, never breaking sweat. Issued on Ross Anderson’s short-lived, London-based Live label, Glued To The Spot swept through the club scene briefly in 1987, embarking for warmer shores when the season changed.’
Dark, menacing and pained; wonderful Upsetters, always timely.
Jen rides the dread Sidewalk Doctor rhythm, with Woman Of The Ghetto lyrics.
Jackie Mittoo puts any survivors to the sword.
Deadly, seventies, New York roots. Rugged, a little wired.
The basic rhythm-track is Wackies-style. The flamboyant brass chart is jazzier. Moody organ, too. Young Roots himself goes on a bit.
The band backed The Aksumites on their first 12” (Afrika Fe De Afrikan) and gigged around the City.
I Believe this reissue is not properly licensed.
Great early-eighties Channel 1 excursion on the same version of DEB’s Revolution rhythm as Barrington Levy’s Black Rose.