Various - One Dub

Been meaning to blog this one for a while, but somewhat oddly got onto the subject of Luciano* with Terry Farley today**, and it reminded me to pull my finger out and get on with it. See, it emerges that one thing me and Mr Farley have in common is a lifelong love of reggae. You wouldn't know it from listening to Junior Boys Own records and you wouldn't know it from reading this blog, but there you go. We were talking about going in scary record shops and buying reggae records when we were (respectively) 12. His was a West London record stall, mine was some random shop in Stratford (east London, where my brother lived at the time), I can't remember what his record was right now but I know mine was the Clint Eastwood & General Saint album, only they'd sold out (it took me till I was about 22 to find it in the end).

ANYWAY Luciano cropped up as someone we both liked from the current crop of reggae artists. Which brings me to what I like most about this album: the broad sweep of artists involved. You've got old school names like Sugar Minott, Michael Rose and Macca B; then you've got more current names that should be familiar to anyone who (like me and Terry, as it transpires) at least TRIES to keep up, like Dr Israel, Luciano, Manasseh and Bush Chemists; and then you've got a bunch of people that I've frankly never heard of. Which makes this a very solid bet if you like reggae and dub, would like to have an idea what's going on right now but don't know where to start.

It's my go-to reggae album du jour, anyway.

About the label/more info: This is on Canadian label Interchill, who seem to do a lot of ambient and leftfield electronic stuff mainly. Here's their website. Also, here's quite an interesting interview I found with Manasseh, from when he was involved with the equally 'useful for keeping up' Nu Shoots Inna Roots comp a few years back.

* The reggae singer Luciano, not the techno producer Luciano

** Come on, if you'd been talking to Terry Farley today, you'd probably name-drop it, too.