[ aquarius records — Reggae Dub ]

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Showing results 251 through 300 of 699.

Our friends over at Ernie B proudly present Mikey Dread's 1981 seminal album World War III. Though Mikey Dread earned a reputation in the mid-seventies Jamaica for being the first DJ in Jamaica (on the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation station) to play exclusively Jamaican artists, his international renown was sealed in 1980 when he worked with British punk band The Clash on several singles and their triple lp opus Sandinista. Featuring the newly formed Roots Radics band as back up and recorded by Scientist, WWIII is arguably the zenith work for Mikey Dread. Their influence on his work is not nearly as evident as Mikey's was on the Clash, so you won't hear any punk and or rock stylngs here. However, Dread's unique buzzing, nasal voice pierces through the mix with his mesmerizing chants in a way that could almost be described as punk in his own distinctively Jamaican way. The album's production itself is a prime example of the best eighties reggae had to offer: an excellent live studio band -- with some ridiculous great bass tones -- augmented by a plethora of engineering tricks and effects -- including the ubiquitous eighties Star-Trek-like synth explosions -- from Scientist. Along with the original 9 tracks that made up the album Ernie B has included 6 bonus dub tracks from the session. This release is, how you say, crucial.

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Soul Jazz moves ever forward into the world of Studio One, no looking back now. Well, not exactly. Sugar Minott's tenure at Studio One represented a brand spanking new way of music production on the fertile Isle of Jamaica. As the '70s wound to a close big changes were on the rise in the music industry. Before the electronic studio would completely take over and all but eliminate the need for studio musicians, the phenomena of recycling rhythms -- which had been building momentum through the sucess of DJ culture -- came to a head... thanks to Studio One's enormous popularity. Using their house band The Revolutionaries, Ernest and Jo Jo Hookim of Channel One had begun re-recording popular Studio One rhythms with their own stable of vocalists penning new lyrics. Successful they were, but for Coxsone Dodd to trump them all he needed to do was just spin an old tape and let someone sing over it. The biggest cache of Jamaican classics resided in his vaults after all. Sugar Minott had already cut his teeth singing with a few other minor groups and it was while working at Studio One as a backup vocalist that he suggested that Coxsone allow him to sing over an old Studio One classic; one that he'd worked up new lyrics to and had been singing for years. Suffice it to say the experiment was a success and eventually resulted in an LP that is oft considered the first dancehall album. Minott opened the flood gates for old vocalists such as Freddie McGregor, Johnnie Osbourne and others. Sugar Minott At Studio One represents a best of collection from tracks he cut at the label between 1978 and 1982 before striking out on his own.

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Despite the blury and poorly registered cover, this is one of the better compilations of instrumental rock-steady tunes from Studio One / Skatalites keyboard genius Jackie Mittoo. If you enjoyed the recent Soul Jazz re-issue "Keyboard King At Studio one" you'll probably really dig this one. Highly recommended.

We've had the vinyl for this floating around for a spell and managed to get the CD in a few wiffins passed, so we thought we'd list them both. In London was recorded by Jackie Mittoo in 1967 (when the keyboardist was at the tender age of 19). Features a plethora of covers, including "Winchester Cathedral", Frank Sinatra's "Something Stupid", Procul Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale", The Beatles "Norwegian Wood" (here titled "Darker Shade of Black") and more, plus five Jackie Mittoo originals and two bonus tracks ("Choice Of Music" & "Hello Studio One") which aren't listed on the tray card. An additional note for those purchasing this disc is that the track listing is wrong, but it's pretty easy to figure out the correct order. Gotta love that Studio 1 copy editing.

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Much can be said comparing Jamaican keyboardist to American counterparts Jimmy Smith and Booker T. Aside from being a master of his instrument at a time when the keyboard was experiencing a renaissance as a leading role - not only in soul & jazz, but in Jamaican rock-steady - he was also a prolific arranger of music. Having cut his teeth as a founding member of the Skatalites (Jamaica's premiere ska group) in 1964 and 1965, Jackie Mittoo went on to become the front man for Studio One's in house band. From 1965 to 1968 Jackie wrote, arranged and played virtually all the music to come out of the studio for such notables as Ken Boothe, Alton Ellis, Marcia Griffiths, Delroy Wilson and the Heptones. The tracks on this album, recorded between 1966 and 1968, represent some of Jackie's best originals and covers (including an off kilter version of Seals & Crofts "Summer Breeze"). These mostly instrumental rock-steady numbers by - as the liner notes say - "Jamica's funkiest keyboardist" are just the thing for moving your butt on a lazy, hot summer day.

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Soul Jazz returns with a second collection of cuts from keyboard wizz Jackie Mittoo. Like the release on their Universal imprint "The Keyboard King At Studio One" this one is bound to be just as popular. Where as "The Keyboard King" focused on Jackie's rocksteady and sundry other cool instrumentals from the early seventies, "Last Train" is a collection of ska era works with his band The Soul Brothers. Formed immediately after the demise of The Skatalites, the Soul Brothers included several members of that legendary band. Along with Mittoo, saxophonist Roland Alphonso, bassist Lloyd Brevett, and trumpet man Johnny Moore all stuck together. The tracks here, like Mittoo's other albums, are primarily instrumentals. Recorded between 1965 and 1967, you can count on a good deal of uptempo numbers still imbued with the ska sound, though the arrangements are a great deal more keyboard-centric (understandably so!) than any ska album you've ever heard.

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24 tracks from one of Jamaica's original ska vocalists. Though the majority of the tracks here were recorded during the sixties, and thus mostly ska, there are a number of early R&B tracks on here that not only bridge the gap between US and Jamaican music,

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Whole record we heard haven't. But song MTV on lately kind of we like. Pleasure guilty of sort a guess I.

12" from the second volume of Select Cuts From Blood & Fire featuring Kid Loco's contribution to the comp, plus a dub mix of his dub.

Montreal's dub outfit Mossman returns with their softmore effort and it doesn't disappoint. Like the first album "Vs. The World Bank", Mossman and crew keep their sound solidly in the tradition of the masters, but refuse to rest on their laurels content with their sound. For "Vs. Mr. Tsunami" the group is paired down to a mere two people: founding member Mossman (percussion, melodica, keys, vocals) & Tsunami (guitar, bass, keys, percussion and occaisional vocalist), with a few cameos from some guest musicians. What the group has lost in live musicians, it has made up for in studio wizardry. While full of modern digital effects and synths the sound is never cheesy or lifeless.

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"I can't believe it's not Scratch." Bringing together the holy trinity of Lee Perry, King Tubby & Scientist (the cover even features a classic Scientist-esque cartoon drawing of Mossman smashing the World Bank and squaring off against hostile military forces) the group known as Mossman (led by percussionist and turntablist "Moss") are to dub / roots what Brooklyn's Antibalas are

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Message In the Dub is not actually a new recording by Mossman, but it is the first time it has been made available. It was actually Mossman's first recording effort, made back in 1999, but for unknown reasons it was never officially released. For those unfamiliar with Mossman, he and a loosely knit group of musicians are a Montreal, Quebec outift dedicated -- it appears -- to the furthering of the classic mid-seventies roots dub sound. And we're far from complaining about that. We'll take our water wherever we can get it. While maybe a little more rough around the edges as Mossman's first "official" album, Vs. The World Bank, this one (unlike their later release Vs. Mr. Tsunami) features a host of musicians -- bass, guitar, percussion, drums, keys, melodica, and smidgen of vocals -- which adds to the authenticity of the flavor.

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Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "Can't Deny It" (Fabolous). B-side says "version" but actually has Capleton's "Forward Inna Clothes" on it.

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SORRY. Hip hop remix. Rhythms = "Ugly" (Bubba Sparxxx) and "Get Ur Freak On" (Missy Elliott). B-side says "version" but has Elephant Man singing his theme song to the "Spiderman" melody.

New hip-hop mix by Lexxus -- a.k.a. Mr Lex - featuring the rhythm track to Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On". Depending where you stand on Missy's new album and blatant dancehall rip offs of important American artists, you may hate this or love it. I like to tell people that this is the alternate take of "Get Ur Freak On" when Missy had a horrible head cold and was possessed by the

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Hip hop remix.

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "We Thuggin'" (Fat Joe). B-side Elephant Man's "One" using that Mystikal break from "Shake Ya Ass".

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SORRY. Hip hop remix

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Hip hop remix.

Naturalist aktionism? Sure, let's call it that. We can't really say that the Hermann Nitsch and Gunter Brus bloodletting as grand allegory is applicable to this collaboration between Portland based sound artists Seth Nehil and Matt Marble; but a rigorous body of work is definitely at hand. These two are the editors of the sound art journal FO A RM, and have both generated impressive bodies of conceptually minded compositions through field recordings, found objects, the almighty drone, and hand-built instruments. Here, Nehil and Marble wax poetic about the overlay of tactile sounds to emphasize the ruptures, holes, and negative spaces which may have been present on each layer of sound. So, instead of a gaping piece of unbroken ambience, Ecllipses is a tense and discordant album of rollicking textures which bristle and scrape against each other. Nehil and Marble revel in tumbles and scrabbles of what could be a revolving metal drum filled with various pine cones, twigs, and pebbles. Elsewhere, they focus upon churning bowed steel-strings, which offer buzzing clouds of softly rendered acoustic noise; and then soft pluckings of what sound like softened dulcimers drift into prolonged echo, hinting at avant-folk drones of Jewelled Antler (especially the Ov recordings) and Kemialliset Ystavat. Barring a minimal amount of signal processing and ring modulation, the album flourishes in the sodden palette of natural objects: wood, grass, leaves, soil, and rock.

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Collection of deejay cuts produced by Niney the Observer between 1974 and 1978. Toasts by U-Roy, Big Youth, I-Roy, Ranking Trevor and Dillinger are featured here and each track is annotated nicely in the liner notes by Blood & Fire.

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A legendary dub album never before released outside Jamaica -- and there with only a teeny run of 300 copies -- comes to us via the upstart Motion label, which is rapidly taking a place next to Blood & Fire as a reissuer of top notch Jamaican music. By the early 70's Niney The Observer had established himself as one of Jamaica's most innovative producers, but like most, had cut his teeth working behind the scenes for others. When Max Romeo's "Macabee" -- a track that the two had worked on together -- became a hit for Romeo, Niney made the decision to strike out on his own. He struck up a close working relationship with a group of young musicians calling themselves the Soul Syndicate and along with singer Dennis Brown found himself releasing numerous hit singles. Sledgehammer Dub is essentially the dub album of Dennis Brown's "Deep Down With Dennis Brown" the tracks for which were recorded as singles in 1974 (and released on LP in 1976) and is itself a bit of a rarity. Niney gave King Tubby the tapes for him to work dubs of for his sound system and the dubs that were later mixed again by King Tubby and then released in 1977 on a very limited white label pressing. A rare occurence in a dub mix that you'll notice on these tracks here is that the vocal parts were not mixed in at all, piece or parcel. On top of the 10 dubs from the original LP are added several bonus dubs (four for the CD, three for the new LP) and some excellent liner notes by David Katz (author of People Funny Boy, the biography of Lee Perry.)

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SORRY. Hip hop remix.

These Collaborations aren't new, no, they were compiled from the numerous guest appearances that the irrepressible Ms Sinead O'Connor has made on other folks' releases over the years. They sure do demonstrate the incredible breadth of her musical forays -- rock, folk, dub, worldbeat, you name it. Some feature O'Connor front and center on lead vocals, while on others her voice is a peripheral subtle embellishment. For all of you diehard fans, it's certainly nice to have them all of these great tracks in one place, instead of cluttering up your music library with a bunch of other artists' albums that you care nothing about aside from the single songs that she appears on -- many which you probably haven't heard since way back in the day. For instance, while Cup's not such a huge O'Connor fan, she admits to having a soft spot for the song "Heroine" which O'Connor did with U2's The Edge back in 1986 for the film Captive. She certainly wore out her vinyl copy of the soundtrack listening to just that one song! Also featured are collabs with Asian Dub Foundation, Bomb The Bass, Ghostland, Jah Wobble, Afro Celt Sound System, The Blockheads, The The, U2, Conjure One, Peter Gabriel, Moby, Aslan, Damien Dempsey, The Colourfield, Terry Hall, and it all begins with Massive Attack's slinking "Special Cases".

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Her powerhouse of a voice still in top form, Sinead O'Connor bursts back into the public eye and ear with two releases -- one a compilation of her collaborations aptly titled Collaborations, and the other being this all reggae covers album, Throw Down Your Arms. We've already heard many folks guffaw at even the thought of this concept (admittedly even though we know that she's no stranger to dub music, our own eyebrows were certainly raised), but let's quash those grumbling right now 'cause y'know what? It totally works. Always one to walk to the beat of her own ever-changing drum, the perennially outspoken O'Connor shows a deep reverence, humility and connection to each of the songs which include straightforward renditions of Burning Spear's "Door Peep", Lee Perry's "Vampire" and "Curly Locks", and Peter Tosh's "Downpressor Man". The musicians backing her are themselves top notch veteran Jamaican artists including Mikey Chung on guitar and Dean Fraser on saxophone not to mention Sly & Robbie who also produced the whole proceedings in Kingston, Jamaica. It all just adds up to pretty darn great!

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The second track from OM's recent Advaitic Songs gets the dub reworking, again by Alpha & Omega, who redid Addis for the first 12", and like that, this new one doesn't need to stretch to far to transform OM into straight up dub, since OM's sound is essentially a doomy dub to begin with. But here, that doom is shed in favor of some old school classic dub sounds. Upstroke guitars, simple grooving rhythms, bass for days, in fact, the bass, and the vocals are really the main thing thee new version retains, the bass driving everything, the sound warm and and hypnotic, a little mellow, but with just a hint of sonic shadow. The vocals translate perfectly, although they're a wee bit more cringeworthy stripped of the supporting sonic heft of the original. And like that first 12", if you weren't familiar with OM, you might not even know this was a remix/reworking, it sounds pretty genuinely old school dub. That said, not all OM fans will dig. A quick look online and seems like lots of folks didn't really get it, or like it, which is surprising considering how dubby in spirit at least OM's actual sound already is. The B side amps up the dubbiness even more, dousing the vocals and rhythms in echo and delay, words and snare cracks careening into the ether, wreathed in warm swirls of melodica melody, everything dreamily druggy and delightfully hazy and washed out. We'd recommend spinning this at 33rpm though, if you want to get some of the doom back, at that speed, it's a dirgey doom-dub creep, the vocals a demonic bellow, the music tarpit thick, the rhythm a droney dubby dirge. Either way, cool stuff, fans of the first 12" will want this one too, and open minded OM fans, give this a try, cuz you know these days it seems like dub, more than metal is the sound that influences OM's sound, see also OM frontman Al Cisneros' dub solo singles for more proof of that!

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Excellent Augustus Pablo collection, 21 tracks in all, some collaborations with King Tubby and Lee Perry.

Collection of 15 previously unreleased dubs by melodica master Augustus Pablo and taken from sessions recorded in the 1970's. A few of the tracks here are alternate versions of dubs that Pablo did with King Tubby on the "Meets Rockers Uptown" album, but most of the tracks here are completely new and all of them were taken directly from the master tapes making this some clean, pristine

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SORRY. 17 tracks. Classic '70s "Rockers" cuts with that "Far East" reggae sound by this recently-departed melodica-wielding genius. Most of us here are not HUGE reggae fans, but have been trying harder as of late to get into the good stuff, and Augustus Pablo gets our "ordinarily-wary-of-reggae-but-this-is-really-ok" seal of approval.

Nice collection of rare 7" and 12" mixes from melodica master Augustus Pablo, recorded between 1973 and 1979. It may concern some Pablo neophytes that most of the tracks here were issued as both 7" and 12" discomixes and even alternate versions of both, so that what you get is a great deal of rhythm repetition. Disregarding this redundancy in rhythm you still get 7 long tracks -- all rare and great -- and for what it's worth, if you can deal with that fact (such is life with Jamaican comps) the arrangements in each mix are completely different. Comes packaged with beautiful full color booklet which includes liner notes contextual to each rhythm family.

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Low priced double disc anthology of Augustus Pablo, apparently part of a series of anthologies of Jamaican artists being released by Recall. Each collection comes with a fair amount of biographical notes on the artist and generally make good starting points if

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