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Words and graphic by DJ Theory
In case your temperature gauge somehow dropped below 90 this week, we’ve got just the right tools to get you back up to 100: new mixes from Japan, Philly and Sweden. The thing tun up!
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Words by Jesse Serwer
Donovan “Don Corleon” Bennett’s Dub in HD, out today on iTunes, Amazon and other online music retailers, is the first dub album by a major Jamaican producer that we’ve heard of in years. Corleon, the producer behind some of the largest riddims of the last decade, told us the project is meant not as a money-making proposition but specifically to expose the next generation of reggae/dancehall fans and producers to the sound and technique. We quizzed Corleon about the project, but–this being Toppa Top 10 Tuesdays and all—first we asked him to break down some of his all-time favorite dub LPs.
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Words by Martei Korley
Hahahaha, UB40??? You mean the guys who did “Red Red Wine”? Yes, absolutely! UB40 was literally the biggest pop group in Europe in the ’80s. VH1 will tell ya: They had more top ten hits than any other group on the European charts. In Thatcher-era England, UB40, their name coined from the form used in the UK to apply for unemployment benefits, became the first major reggae outfit of mixed heritage. The ethnic makeup of the band is diverse, with musicians of English, Scottish, Irish, Yemeni and Jamaican parentage… Fronted by Englishman Ali Campbell with his brother Robin singing harmonies, the band transitioned from UK dub of the lighter persuasion towards a more forward Jamaican sound. Everybody was very impressed with Sly and Robbie in the early ’80s, and this was exactly the time period in which UK reggae flourished. British bands were actually producing songs which had relevance in Jamaica and similarly impressed home audiences. “If It Happens Again” is a prime example of that synergy. When you couple ambitious horn arrangement and a riddim section with a dancehall penchant, the result is something like this now 27-year-old tune. The surreal video, replete with some crazy animation, kids in rubber masks with the band members’ faces—AND Linn drums!—just sews it all up.
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Words by Jesse Serwer
Punk-reggae fusionist Arianna Forster, AKA Ari Up of the Slits, has died at age 48 of an unspecified “serious” illness, according to her stepfather John Lydon (yes, Johnny Rotten was her stepfather). The all-female, barely-teenaged Slits were, along with the Clash (whose Joe Strummer, it is said, taught Ari how to play guitar), among the first punk acts to inject their sound with a heavy dose of reggae flavor. Like any worthwhile punk band, they flamed out just as quickly as they arrived, releasing just two albums—1979′s Cut (its notorious cover art depicting the mostly underaged band mostly naked, but for some mud) and 1981′s Return of the Giant Slits—before disbanding. Up, however, immersed herself deeper into Jamaican culture and reggae music following the legendary group’s demise, recording with dub producer Adrian Sherwood as the New Age Steppers in the ’80s, growing epicly long dreads and, eventually, moving to the Jamaican countryside and, later, Kingston. (She later split her time in Flatbush, Brooklyn as well). In yard, Up rolled with Stone Love, and adopted the nickname “Madussa,” she told the Montreal Mirror, after Jamaicans began derisively calling her Medusa for her unusual look.
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Words by Eddie STATS Houghton
The good people at Addis Tunes–a great resource for EthioJazz and afrofunk of all stripes–just put out the word on a new album project aptly titled Ethiopia Calling from Sydney Salmon and the Imperial Majestic reggae band. As the name suggests, Syd is a Kingston native and Twelve Tribes rasta who in 2001 relocated (or repatriated, depending how you look at it) to Ethiopia, where he is currenlty based, making music and raising funds for the Jamaican Rastafarian Development Community in Shashamane land. The end result is a tour de force of solid and soulful one drop in the vein of Luciano or Morgan Heritage but colored by the cadences of Ethiopia on tracks like “Selassie Yenefesewassie,” “Chika” and “Egziabher Yemesgen.”
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Words by Eddie STATS Houghton
It’s true you reap what you sow; a few months back I gave homie and AfroPop Worldwide producer Wills Glasspiegel some game on dub pioneers who were still amongst the living, leads that became interviews for his brand new super-ape of a radio documentary for the Hip Deep segment of APW. When I went to check it I realized that in their mission to cover Afro-diasporic culture in all it’s multiform beauty, Hip Deep has actually been at least neckdeep in Caribbean culture. Check the trailer for Dub: the Medium is the Message below but then go to APW for the interviews with Lee Scratch, Clive Chin and Bullwackies, not to mention recent shows on Trinidad Carnival, Merengue and Afro-Dominican music, Chutney and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, the zouk rhythm of the French Antilles, the secret history of Reggaeton and more…!
