AQ's summer of dub continues! You may have noticed that lately we've been dipping into the vaults, coming up with some pretty amazing classic reggae and dub records that we never had the chance to list before, and while they may not be new, we think they totally deserve attention and anyone who missed out on these before most definitely deserves another chance to lay their ears on these divine sounds.
Earlier this summer we gushed about some classic releases by Black Uhuru and Horace Andy, and this 1981 outing by the legendary Prince Far I ranks right up there when it comes to deep grooved free flowing dub. Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 3 leads off with Prince Far I's commanding outerspace vocals that make us imagine what it might have sounded like if Afrika Bambata cut a dub record inside Thunderdome. The rest of the album is mostly instrumental top notch dub with some female vocals sprinkled sparingly throughout, with the main focus remaining on all the weird textures, electronics, tape speed fuckery and just flat out delicious dubby delights! Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 3 sort of serves as this perfect bridge using the early roots of '70s dub as its foundation but pushing forward a new vision of the possibilities of dub. So damn good!
Prince Far I's first album (1976) finally available again on lp (we also restocked the cd if vinyl is no good for you.) It's basically, as the title implies, the Voice Of Thunder himself toasting the Psalms (using some poetic license of course) in his unique, gruff fashion. Definitely a crucial work.
Along with Scientist, Prince Jammy was one of King Tubby's top pupils (engineers) and by the late seventies, when the tracks on this disc were laid down, he was pretty much the chief house engineer at King Tubby's. The tracks themselves are all classic Dennis Brown produced recordings with the zenith of studio musicians for the period laying down the foundation, including: Sly & Robbie (the ubiquitous rhythm section), Ansel Collins (organ), Cedric Brooks (horns), Junior Delgado (percussion) and more. Prince Jammy's engineering style here is quite similar to his mentor's, utilizing a very minimal toolbox: Tubby's EQ, tape delay, reverb and track faders. As far as can be told by listening and glancing at the notes, there wasn't any additionally tracking done on the original tapes by Prince Jammy, just straight up dubs. Props must also go out to either Blood & Fire for doing an excellent restoration job, or some kind soul for keeping the master tapes safe from deterioration all these years. For if we can't come up with any new superlatives for a good clean dub record anymore we can at least say about this one that it's been excellently preserved.
It's amazing sometimes how the DIY aesthetic is all but permanently affixed with punk rock at times. Now don't get me wrong, I love punk rock just as much as the next sailor, but when you look at all the Jamaican artists out there that formed their own
Record number two from this all female power trio from Portland, don't let the hippy cover art fool you, this is some awesomely psychedelic and fuzz drenched Sabbathy stoner garage doom space rock fuzz pop. In our review of their first record we said it sounded like "Quix*O*Tic meets Pentagram, due in no small part to the soaring dramatic vocals (not to mention the heavy riffing), and this time around the same still applies, in fact the vocals are even more intense and emotional, which had us wanting to alter that description to now read "Sleater Kinney meets Black Sabbath", tough to argue with that, but then why would you want to. These ladies SLAY, unfurling groovy stonery riffs, unleashing thick swaths of metallic crunch, thick buzzing riffage, powerful simple drumming, rad psychedelic leads, the sound heavy and metallic, but laced with a witchy folky vibe, which the band fully embrace, sometimes ditching the heaviness entirely and weaving lush sonic spells of acoustic guitar and dreamy vocals, only to launch right back into some stripped down dirgey, doomy creep, some lumbering metallic downtuned crunch, or some groovy wah wah laced stoner rock. Awesome!
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If you love Jackie Mittoo, you'll most certainly love Ernest Ranglin as well. Ernie is the guitar equivalent to Mittoo's laid back keyboard stylings. Impeccably-produced instrumental guitar work, somewhere between Martin Denny style lounge and rock steady. Excellent!
Ras G is a member of the LA based Flying Lotus crew, having contributed jams to FL's records, as well as releasing a ton of limited releases on his own label. So we were interested to hear this...
Trafficking in a J Dilla instrumental hip hop style, Ras G has crafted what is essentially his own Donuts, an instrumental beats and breaks record, most of the tracks hovering at about the one or two minute mark, and while the obvious hip hop headz probably already dig this stuff, or soon will, it seems to us like everyone who's been going nuts for stuff like Clams Casino, How To Dress Well, Balam Acab, Shlohmo and that sort of post-witch house slo-mo-soul might dig this too. Although it's definitely a bit more ADD than the usual WH blissed out atmospheric sprawl. But within these brief blasts, there's so much shit going on, video game sounds, clipped and looped vocal samples, dubbed out rhythms, so many cool unlikely samples, funky horns, lots of record crackle and warped and warbly melodies, he also seems to be strangely obsessed with that horn, the one that you always hear at sporting events (and was recently featured in a Drake / Eminem radio hit), all arranged meticulously into micro soul classics, bumpin' hip hop could have been hits, and throughout, there are some seriously sick beats, the vibe sorta groovy and laid back, like some old dusty record, discovered while crate digging in some alternate universe, and played back on some strange contraption that spins lps in your chopped and lowered ride. So rad!
Japanese reissue label EM gives us another killer reissue from this unsung post punk / dub / reggae icon, this one a fantastic slice of classic late seventies / early eighties DIY weirdness/radness. Ostensibly a post punk record, but WAY heavy on the dub influence, the whole thing was recorded and assembled in a home studio, and overflows with all manner of abstract experimentation and twisted songcraft. From the first few seconds of "The Scream", we were smitten, with its weird processed drumming and handclaps, its weird industrial shimmer, and FX heavy vocals, the pulsating bassline, it's groovy and funky and fierce as fuck, and had us wishing it was way longer than 2 minutes. The second track is all woozy drum machine driven fuzzy sixties pop, sounding like Young Marble Giants or Black Tambourine, all reverbed jangle, hazy vox, and then the next song is some home brewed lo-fi reggae, with wheezing melodica melodies, groovy upstroke guitar strum, weird samples, and cool fractured vocal snippets, and what sounds like pinball percussion.
The whole record is all over the map, tending toward a dub/reggae for sure, but even within that 'sound', Ray mixes it up, processed horn blurts, FX drenched guitars, dueling girl boy vox, tripped out rhythms, and for every straight up reggae dub jam, there's some cool fuzzy pop jam, Ray's dreamy vocals wreathed in reverb and wrapped in angular guitars, surfing atop propulsive grooves, but it's the weirder jams here that get us the most excited, thankfully that's most of them. "Maybe It's Because I'm Not A Londoner", is a dubby creep, all tinkling chimes, skronking horns, woozy low slung basslines, droned out and darkly psychedelic, while "Rahmatullah", is a gorgeous slice of fluttering flute flecked spiritual jazz, with a slight dub bent, Ray's dreamy vocals draped over dense tribal drumming, and all tangled up with the ethereal flute melodies, and "Spring Thing-Hippy Dread" is some seriously dubbed out psychedelic abstract reggae, woozy and warped, and dreamily druggy, and in between all this weirdness, is some seriously catchy, and slightly fractured post punk dreampop, and the combination of the two is weirdly perfect.
Includes extensive liner notes in both Japanese and English and tons of rare photos.
UK post-punk's symbiotic relationship to dub and reggae is not really news to most folks. Especially with the genre's female stars, The Slits, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Poly Styrene, Lora Logic, Patti Palladin and even Annabelle of Bow Wow Wow, all have found voice within dub's flexible framework that embraces both communal grooves and personal politics. Brenda Ray may not be as well known as the others, but since the late '70s has figured in some of the more shadowy areas of post-punk and new wave. Her bands, The Naffis, recently featured on the D-I-Y compilation put out by Soul Jazz, and Brenda and the Beachballs combined reggae rhythms with off kilter dance pop. Here on Walatta, recorded in the late '90s and early 2000s and recently reissued by AQ-beloved Japanese label EM Records, Ray overdubs her breathy vocals as well as melodica and various percussion instruments over heavy roots rhythms recorded much earlier in Jamaica by Roy Cousins that featured heavyweight Kingston session players such as Sly and Robbie and Family Man Barrett. The result is better than it sounds, as Ray brings her own unique style to the proceedings and deftly complements the heavy reggae foundation with an interesting pop finesse. Nice.
Now available on vinyl!
We love dancehall. A lot! Makes perfect sense too, a grinding, pounding, throbbing mix of hip hop and dub, with that totally repetitive, hypnotic, instantly recognizable dancehall beat, you know: BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP. With tongue twisting toasting over the top. Very similar to grime (which is probably why we love grime so much too). Hard really to improve on dancehall, you could maybe, rough it up a little, and, which gives us ragga of course, but then, you could also make the beats even thicker and crunchier and WAY more distorted, you could have the vocalists toast through a tin can and twine run through a fuzzbox and plugged into a battered old blown out loudspeaker, you could take all that stuff and supercharge it, send it coursing through your speakers as if your stereo was struck by lightning, the resulting sounds coming out of your speaker a hard and heavy, fierce and fucked up, super aggressive and distorted but still totally wild and danceable digital hardcore ragga. Whoowee!! Fuck yeah! Similar to the way Alec Empire and other folks took drum 'n' bass and jungle and turned it into superdistorted hardcore brutality, a few likeminded noiseniks have been doing the same with ragga, giving it a DHR makeover, turning already pretty aggressive ragga music into a brain melting blast of buzzing and blown out dancehall. One of those folks is the UK's Kevin Martin, who after years of lurking on the fringes of the noise underground, running the Pathological label and playing in God, Ice and a handfull of other fucked up dubbed out noise outfits (maybe hinting at what was to come), renamed himself the Bug, and started making dark and dense dubby dancehall, the new sound owing as much to classic dub and dancehall as it did to his time spent playing weird fucked up noisiness. A few years back the Bug hooked up with Rootsman and formed Razor X Production, a dynamic duo that began to whip up all sorts of brutal distorted ragga classics, all big beats, blown out production and toasting by some of the world's best reggae / dub / ragga vocalists: Cutty Ranks, He-Man, Daddy Freddy, Tony Tuff, Mexican, El Feco and more. This double disc collects some of the best singles, beats are jagged and sharp, distorted stabs, rumbling rib cage rattling low end, synths are massive thick smears of speaker shredding fuzz, each track a pulsing, throbbing dubbed out groove as hard and pummeling as it is groovy and funky. If all "dance music" was this fucked up and firece and fun even us wallflowers would be forced to spend all our evenings sweating and slithering all over the dance floor.
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Dancehall mix, b/w hip hop mix.
"The best thing I've heard all year," says Spiritualized's Jason Pierce in Mojo magazine's recent year-end poll. Windy's new favorite record. Red Rat is super tinny, way catchy Jamaican dancehall with cover art that makes you think they're gonna sound like Kid 'n Play. Energetically juvenile in a good way. Here's more from Jason (with whom we heartily agree): "I think 1997 was a year in which drum'n'bass became more divided in terms of the quality of what was being produced. Alongside the more innovative output - Springheel Jack, Photek, and the fervour of Grooverider - there was a whole load of background, formula music to a point where it became harder to hear the real classics ... "With this in mind, hearing [Red Rat's] 'Shelley Anne' played for the first time or Aphrodite's 'Woman That Rolls', it was clear that this was not ENGLISH drum'n'bass but was so radically different and exciting in the same way as, say, hearing Tricky's garage version of Public Enemy's 'Black Street.' "I always said that hearing drum'n'bass in England had a feel of what it must have been like to attend a Sam & Dave or an MC5 show in the late '60s. Everyone knew that this was exciting, knew that this was exploting unknown territory but it was also just entertainment of the highest order. 'Shelley Anne' possesses all of this and more - alongside Aphrodite, some of the most exciting music of the year."
From the archives of Channel 1 recording studios in Jamaica comes another fine collection of dubs from circa 1976 featuring house band The Revolutionaries, featuring Sly & Robbie, Tommy McCook, and Skully. Really nice and minimal dubs, many of them stripped
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We definitely don't always know everything there is to know about dub (especially now that Byram, our dub expert, has left us), you know, the studios, the players, the history, but heck, we do know what we like, and what we like most is that spaced out, blissed out, reverb drenched dub, just dripping in delay, every snare hit skittering into infinity, all over huge warm throbbing basslines, with simple guitar melodies surfacing here and there before dipping back under the swirl of burbling bass and echoing rhythms. Barely any vocals, but when vocals do appear, they are immediately chopped up and sent spinning into a celestial echo chamber, along with those reverberating snare hits. Occasional horns too, even flutes, all warm and wrapped in a gauzy studio haze, lurking dreamily beneath the dubbed out skeleton of each song. So good! The Revolutionaries (featuring Sly Dunbar on drums) were the Channel One house band, and had played on just about every great reggae and dub record you can think of. For Earthquake Dub, Ossie Hibbert, arranger and session boss for Channel One and Joe Gibbs, manned the board, smearing those perfect reggae rhythms into gloriously dubbed out bliss! This is the first release on relatively new reggae / dub reissue label Hot Pot, and features liner notes as well as plenty of info on each track.
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Hmmm, rhythm and sound. What else is there? What else do you need? Especially when the rhythm is a shuffling dubbed out reggae filtered through that Berlin minimal techno heroin-house aesthetic we love so much, and the sound is the gorgeous vocals of reggae vocalists like Sugar Minott, Paul St. Hilaire (aka Tikiman), Jah Cotton and others. Thus we have this latest outing from Rhythm & Sound, the German production team of Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald. On their last record from a few years back, With The Artists, Ernestus and von Oswald teamed up with various reggae vocalists, and See Mi Yah is a bit of a continuation of that, a modern minimalist version of the 'one rhythm' album, where each vocalist takes a turn singing over the same rhythm. But unlike most one rhythm records, Ernestus and von Oswald arrange and mix the rhythm differently for each track, so See Mi Yah ends up sounding like one totally gorgeous, 46 minute long, druggy, drifty, shimmery, hypnotic slab of blissed out dub. Which it basically is. The See Mi Yah rhythm is a lush bit of heroin-reggae (think Chain Reaction heroin house meets the dubbiest of reggae) a drifting skeletal pulse above a murky and dense soundscape, shuffling and throbbing, slowly shifting and stretching farther and farther out. So completely mesmerizing. Vocalists include: Sugar Minott, Paul St. Hilaire, Freddy Mellow, Bobbo Shanti, Ras Donovan, Ras Perez, Koki, Walda Gabriel, Rod Of Iron, Jah Cotton and Willi Williams. So glad we finally were able to get this in, been waiting for it for a while due to lame distribution problems!
All hail Rhythm & Sound, our favorite German produced, blissed out murky reggae dub outfit ever. Simple and spare, dreamy and laid waaaaay back. Every track a druggy, dark and hypnotic jam. This disc gives R&S's recent See Mi Yah album the remix treatment, and who are we to argue with more looped digital dubbed out bliss?
The tracks that work best for us, are the ones that are stripped even further down, stretched farther out, and taken as far out as possible. Worth it for the Vainqueur remix alone, a looped reggae groove transformed into a fuzzy slab of 'heroin house', like some Gas dubplate being pumped out of some Jamaican sound system. So good. The opener, remixed by the Basic Channel guys, is a killer as well. Still spare and spacious, but a little more propulsive and a bit more techno. The Villalobos remix is cool too, a weird stuttery jam, with chopped up horns, falsetto vocals and bad ass toasting. The rest of the disc follows the same sort of pattern, the stripped down originals given a slight rhythmic overhaul, but with a definite dancefloor bent. Lots of techno mixes and four on the floor beats, but it works, since the originals were so sparse already and just begging to be reworked and remixed.
We've been getting these Burial Mix 10" singles in here for some time now and probably the single most asked question regarding them has been "when the hell are they going to release these on CD?" Well, the time has come. Rhythm & Sound created a stripped down post-Detroit techno sound reminiscent of Chain Reaction and the Stefan Betke/Pole continuum of Euro-dub artists. Unlike others though, Rhythm & Sound took it one step further and acquired the talents of some excellent modern roots vocalists like Paul St. Hilaire (Tikiman), Cornel Campbell, Shalom, The Chosen Brothers, Love Joy, Jennifer Lara and Jah Batta. Asphodel has pragmatically chosen to release the singles as two separate discs, one of the A-sides including the vocals and one of the B-side dub remixes; cuz sometimes you feel like a nut, n' sometimes you don't.
We've been getting these Burial Mix 10" singles in here for some time now and probably the single most asked question regarding them has been "when the hell are they going to release these on CD?" Well, the time has come. Rhythm & Sound created a stripped down post-Detroit techno sound reminiscent of Chain Reaction and the Stefan Betke/Pole continuum of Euro-dub artists. Unlike others though, Rhythm & Sound took it one step further and acquired the talents of some excellent modern roots vocalists like Paul St. Hilaire (Tikiman), Cornel Campbell, Shalom, The Chosen Brothers, Love Joy, Jennifer Lara and Jah Batta. Asphodel has pragmatically chosen to release the singles as two separate discs, one of the A-sides including the vocals and one of the B-side dub remixes; cuz sometimes you feel like a nut, n' sometimes you don't.
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Year in and year out, Jonathan Richman keeps on opening his heart in song to his legions of devoted fans delight. Charmingly heartfelt, genuinely sweet and seemingly ageless, his latest album Because Her Beauty Is Raw & Wild is Richman at his best. Just him and his guitar nailing you right in the heart over and over again in his unmistakable lilting, multilingual style. A perfect spring into summer album! Breezy and carefree!
Dancehall seven inches galore. This one agaian has the One Minute Man rhythm (Missy Elliott). B-side, though claiming to contain a "Remix" of the aforementioned rhythm, has a completely unrelated version.
As a founding member of the extremely successful group The Techniques, way back in 1962, Winston Riley probably could have retired at an early age. But, like many who'd started their careers under the production monopolies of Dodd and Reid, Riley eventually set out on his own to form his Techniques label. And while he never had a stable a fraction the size of Coxsone, he did have significant success. Most notable was his production of Ansel Collins' "Stalag 17" in 1973. Today the Stalag rhythm is one of the most heavily versioned rhythms on the island. But this collection doesn't cover either Riley's earlier work as a performer or producer. Instead, "Dancehall Techniques" compiles some of the producer's best work from the period between 1986 and 1991 -- the dawn of the digital era for Jamaica. 1985 saw the release of Wayne Smith's "Under Mi Sleng Teng" with revolutionarily minimal production by Prince Jammy -- the rhythm being no more than the stock Casio keyboard "reggae" rhythm. Like other producers, Winston Riley wasn't about to be left wallowing in the past. And while you won't hear the Sleng Teng rhythm used here, those who are ill disposed to listen to drum machine rhythms -- and a lot of rhythm recycling to boot -- might be advised to look elsewhere. The track that most all Aquarius customers are certain to be familiar with is Tenor Saw & Buju Banton's "Ring The Alarm Quick" -- itself a reworking of the Stalag rhythm. Also included on this comp are tracks from such household names as Super Cat, Michael Prophet, Cutty Ranks, Gregory Isaacs and Admiral Tibet.
Island records reissues the soundtrack to this classic Jamaican comedy / musical. Features tracks by Inner Circle, Junior Murvin (Police & Thieves of course), The Heptones, Peter Tosh, Junior Byles, Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs, The Upsetters, Burning Spear, Justin Hinds & The Dominoes, and more. Originally released in 1979.
Attention Steel Pan Fans! Japan's EM Records at your service, with the latest (fourth already) in their unusual series of obscure reissues featuring that trademark Trinidadian tuned percussion instrument, the steel pan (drum). If you've been with the series thus far, you'll want this one too for sure. Or, if you've never checked out any steel pan music, this wouldn't be a bad place to start, either. As the first ever solo album by a steel pan player from Trinidad, one who'd been the musical director for calypso superstars Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow, it had a duty to be groovy, and Earl Rodney's 1973 album Friends & Countrymen is nothing if not groovy, slinkily so on opening track "Juck Juck" ferinstance. Recorded in New York City by Rodney and group of fellow expatriates from the islands, this album is mostly instrumental, most definitely danceable, full of Afro-Caribbean rhythms, jazzy horns, funky '70s wah wah guitar, congas, whistles, and of course the lovely vibes-like sounds of the steel pans themselves.
As always with EM releases, this reissue is top notch, the cardboard gatefold sleeve containing a fold-out 12"x12" poster of the album's wild and colorful cover painting. Man, by the time EM is done with this Steel Pan Series of theirs, we're ALL gonna be steel pan fans, dammit. They will not take no for an answer.
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Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" (Eve).
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Hip hop remix.
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Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "One Minute Man" (Missy Elliott).
Wow, a super special "nice price" deal on this longtime AQ fave. Great collaboration betwixt - His Lord Majesty - Mad Professor, and the mysterious Douggie Digital, circa 1995. Deep, pulsing dub underlayed with jungle beats. It works great, and if that ain't enough, there's a cameo appearance from - His Royal Nuttiness - Lee Scratch Perry!
Here's one that may appeal to those interested in the recent post punk reissues such as The Pop Group, A Certain Ratio, the In The Beginning compilation, etc. From the same label that put out the 'Select Cuts From Blood & Fire' compilations comes a reissue of London's Ruts DC. Originally known as Ruts, the group added the additional initials after losing their front man Malcolm Owen to a heroin overdose. The remaining members of the group restructured their sound, modelling it much closer to the reggae and dub that had informed their rock foundation. After the unsuccessful 1981 release 'Animal Now', the group hooked up with Mad Professor at his newly constructed Ariwa Studio the following year and hammered out the 8 tracks for 'Rhythm Collision'. Although they couldn't claim to be the first of the "second wave" of punk groups to cite dub as an influence, they certainly took reggae music to heart and the overall sound of 'Rhythm Collision' is perhaps the most identifiably "reggae" of any to come out of the London scene. Combined with Mad Professor's technical wizardry the album was impressive in its ability to absorb the aesthetics of dub while avoiding being merely Jamaican imitators. Depending on one's prior familiarity with the album the indelible eighties production stamp on these tracks can be an obstacle, as can the occasional harmonica solos and cheesy vocals. But thank the heavens their bassist avoids the funky / slap bass urge on all but one track. It's really not as bad as all that, sounding at times a lot like what Tones On Tail did years later. As a bonus to the original tracks from 'Rhythm Collision' are five bonus remixes courtesy of Mad Professor. AND, on top of the original album and the Mad Professor remixes, there's an additional disc of remixes by Zion Train which were executed at Ariwa in 1998 on Mad Professor's now antique, or classic, gear.
If you never heard of this obscure eighties female fronted world-pop outfit, get in line. An unlikely mix of Teutonic new wave and dubby balearic dance pop created in Bremen, Germany, Saada Bonaire only released one single in their lifetime. Now Captured Tracks, through its new imprint Fantasy Memory, has brought to us the complete recordings of this short-lived outfit, and it's pretty amazing, especially if you are into lost post-punk disco rarities as much as we are. Created by Bremen DJ Ralf Behrendt in 1982, and recorded in Kraftwerk's studio by legendary dub-punk producer Dennis Bovell (The Pop Group, The Slits) featuring an array of jazz and world musicians hired from the local immigrant center, Saada Bonaire was fronted by Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfield, whose sultry but blase delivery make their sound a sort of hybrid between the domineering dance music of Gina X and Grace Jones and the breezy dub of Brenda Ray. The aforementioned single "You Can Be More As You Are" is an infectious post-disco club classic, that probably had a lot more traction in southern Europe than in the west. Their music, with its exotic flourishes and dreamy tropical rhythms, seems tailor-made for warmer climates, and we can easily see these tracks being played in sunrise dance sets after a long night of clubbing. Definitely a band that should have been a lot bigger than they were, their lack of success the fault of EMI's A&R man who notoriously went over budget with the acts he developed. After going over 5x the budget for Tina Turner's Private Dancer, EMI pulled the plug on Saada Bonnaire and they were rarely heard from since. This anthology covers everything the band recorded between 1982 and 1985, but still remains surprisingly modern sounding for being 30 years old.
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While he hasn't really had any projects quite as popular as his original group Cabaret Voltaire, Richard H. Kirk has been quite busy and surprisingly prolific, most often indulging his electronic side. Sandoz is his dub project inspired by the heavy dub grooves of King Tubby but with a very '90s/modern electronic feel to it. And while modern dub as the potential to be cheesy, this is actually quite good. Deep and dark and dubby, almost sounds like it could be some lost Wordsound joint. Cool.
When we asked our reggae distributor for recent AQ-staff fave Ward 21, his response was a baffled "uh, yeah, sure we've got those" but when we asked about the Scare Dem records he just laughed and asked whether we were going to start selling crack. I guess
It's funny, until just now -- and we've had this album floating around the reggae section for a few weeks already -- I didn't know that the picture of the Crew on the cover is supposed to be taken in a graveyard. You'd think with an album title like "Scared
