Various Artists:
Island Records Presents Dub:
Island:
2xCD:
Out Now:
★★★★★★★★☆☆
Following on from similar Island Records Presents compilations, this Dub compendium makes even better use of the enigmatic label's vaults. Packed full of treasures compiled by stalwart Laurence Cane-Honeysett, some previously unreleased on CD and a few never issued on any format in the UK, ...Presents Dub gathers up 38 prime cuts from across the earlier decades, showcasing producers such as Lee Perry, Sly & Robbie, Lawrence Lindo and several self-produced heavy-duty bass-and-drum workouts.
Familiar anthems such as Police and Thieves (Junior Murvin), Night Nurse (Gregory Isaacs) and The Tide Is High (The Paragons, an unreleased mix) rub shoulders with exemplary comparative rarities such as Zion (The Righteous Foundation), The Black Spy (Jacob Miller) and World A Music Dub (Ini Kamoze), with the whole double-disc package topped off with brief but informative sleevenotes from Michael de Koningh and some serious label-porn in the form of images of various Island labels from across the years.
The likes of Studio One may have ruled the roost when it came to hard-ass dubs back in the day, but major-labels like Island (and Virgin's Front Line) racked up some considerable heavyweight rockers back in the day - check out the eerie Third World dub Satta Massagana, the speaker-trembling minimalism of Wailing Souls' Something Funny and the bubbling studio-trickery of Black Uhuru's Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. In fact, if any of you out there want to study dub for coursework, this compilation is a decent enough place to start.
Some of the tracks on here are so far ahead of the game some thirty or forty years on, it makes you wonder how the dub artform fell out of favour for a while - check One Step Dub by Max Romeo and the Upsetters, basically a Lee Perry vehicle and brimming with neat touches and spatial nuances todays producers can only dream of. Formidable.
Island Records Presents Dub:
Island:
2xCD:
Out Now:
★★★★★★★★☆☆
Familiar anthems such as Police and Thieves (Junior Murvin), Night Nurse (Gregory Isaacs) and The Tide Is High (The Paragons, an unreleased mix) rub shoulders with exemplary comparative rarities such as Zion (The Righteous Foundation), The Black Spy (Jacob Miller) and World A Music Dub (Ini Kamoze), with the whole double-disc package topped off with brief but informative sleevenotes from Michael de Koningh and some serious label-porn in the form of images of various Island labels from across the years.
The likes of Studio One may have ruled the roost when it came to hard-ass dubs back in the day, but major-labels like Island (and Virgin's Front Line) racked up some considerable heavyweight rockers back in the day - check out the eerie Third World dub Satta Massagana, the speaker-trembling minimalism of Wailing Souls' Something Funny and the bubbling studio-trickery of Black Uhuru's Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. In fact, if any of you out there want to study dub for coursework, this compilation is a decent enough place to start.
Some of the tracks on here are so far ahead of the game some thirty or forty years on, it makes you wonder how the dub artform fell out of favour for a while - check One Step Dub by Max Romeo and the Upsetters, basically a Lee Perry vehicle and brimming with neat touches and spatial nuances todays producers can only dream of. Formidable.