Released by Trojan Records in the UK in 1975, Ja-Gan quickly became a must-have long-player for dub enthusiasts and devotees of the melodica sound first popularised by Augustus Pablo two years earlier.
Despite crediting keyboard whizz Leslie Butler as the primary artist, the Harry Johnson-produced LP primarily showcased the talents of singer-turned melodica maestro Joe White, whose proficiency of the instrument rivalled that of his more widely celebrated contemporary, Augustus Pablo.
Remarkably, White also went unacknowledged on the front sleeve of ‘Dub Wise’, the Jamaican pressing of the LP, which instead credited the engineer responsible for mixing the set, Sylvan Morris!
Category: dub
2026 marks the 20th anniversary of Nightmares On Wax‘s (George Evelyn) seminal In a Space Outta Sound, as a dub clash with On-U Sound producer and mixing desk wizard Adrian Sherwood titled In a Space Outta Dub, revisioning eight of the 2006 album’s songs. While the original tunes remain recognizable, Sherwood adds his own visionary sonic signature full of humid warmth, languid rhythms, and sultry grooves
Opener “You Bliss” is a sonic redesign of “You Wish.” The original William Bell Stax guitar sample remains, but it’s submerged by smoky saxophone and an organ that sounds like it was lifted from the Doors’ LA Woman sessions. Sherwood’s trademark dread bassline is boosted, heavily reverbed, and echo-laden. It sounds quite…
Since its inception in 2002, independent label Soundway Records has unearthed coveted musical gems from far-flung corners of the world, with foundations that are rooted in meticulously sourced reissues. A collection of fourteen digital reggae, deep roots and dub rarities from the Nigerian underground, spotlighting a time when Jamaican reggae entwined with Nigerian styles, politics and consciousness, creating a bridge between Lagos and Kingston. Fight the Fire is a companion piece to Soundway’s seminal “Doing it in Lagos” and “Nigeria Special” compilations, celebrating the innovation and musical experimentation of Nigeria in the 80s. Features rare tracks from key figures of the time including Oby Onyioha (with a crucial Burning Spear cover) and Orits Williki.
For a band that has always cultivated a unique and idiosyncratic sound, New Age Doom appears to have fully mastered their craft on Angels Against Angels. The album demonstrates a confident command of arrangement and atmosphere, tactically marshalling diverse musical elements while seamlessly integrating multiple genres. At the same time, it advances a spiritual message rooted in equality, love and truth.
Sparkling with elements of jazz, experimental, electronic, progressive rock and dub, the record is elevated further by the unmistakable vocals and lyricism of H.R. (Human Rights), frontman of the legendary band Bad Brains. Angels Against Angels uproots disparate sonic textures and intricately fuses them with both playfulness…
Badawi was born Raz Mesinai in 1973 in Jerusalem. By spending a lot of time with Bedouins in the Sinai desert as a youngster, he picked up on their unique musical style.
When he reached the age of seven, he was taken under the wing of dervish sheik Murshid Hassan (of the Palestinian refugee camp of Balata), who taught the youngster all about exotic Middle Eastern drumming.
Soon he had mastered such percussive instruments as the bendir, zarb, and darbukka. After moving to New York City, he found himself immersed in the burgeoning NYC Academy of Underground DJs (which included DJ Spooky and a host of others) and changed his name to Badawai (which means “desert dweller” or simply “Bedouin”).
The Nakibembe Embaire Group’s self-titled debut album was one of the highlights of 2023. Nyege Nyege Tapes captured the disappearing East African tradition of the embaire, a giant wooden xylophone designed to be played by as many as eight musicians at a time. The instrument can be the social center of a village, placed in a deep pit to amplify what is already a powerful sound.
On its own, the embaire ensemble generates a huge amount of energy. Repeating, overlapping figures are a kind of proto-minimalism, Steve Reich without the precise, bookish glaze.
…The result is their live collaboration with Japanese live-sound engineer Naoyuki Uchida, Phantom Keys. Six men do their thing on the embaire, while Uchida applies his live-dub…
The long-overdue revival of Bim Sherman’s catalog begins here. These essential recordings will become widely available again for the first time in decades, opening a new chapter in the appreciation of one of Jamaica’s most distinctive voices and representing a major moment for reggae and dub aficionados around the world. This reissue series will not only preserve his legacy but will also offer listeners the chance to experience the depth and timeless resonance of Sherman’s work in its full glory.
Bim Sherman-born Jarret Lloyd Vincent, in Westmoreland, Jamaica—holds a unique place in reggae history. Emerging in the mid 70s, his ethereal, haunting vocal style quickly set him apart from his contemporaries. He was soon collaborating with the top producers…
New 2026 Edition of 600% Dynamite, part of Soul Jazz Records classic compilation series of Jamaican music, featuring killer reggae in all styles – ska, soul, rocksteady, dancehall, funk and dub. Originally released in 2003 this album has been out of print for nearly 20 years making it one of the most-collectible of Soul Jazz Records’ Dynamite! Series.
Newly remastered and relicensed for 2026, the album is packed with dancefloor classics and non-stop reggae anthems such as Tenor Saw’s ‘Golden Hen’, Johnny Osbourne’s ‘Buddy Bye’, Dennis Brown’s ‘Wolf & Shepard’ and Sister Nancy’s ’Transport Connection’ alongside hard-to-find cuts by Tall T and the Touchers, The Interns, Tetrack and others, making the album a superlative…
Dub techno runs in Brendon Moeller’s veins. For over 20 years, the South African artist has been one of the genre’s true workhorses, building up an intimidating discography under names like Echologist and Beat Pharmacy and applying the style’s pearlescent, pulsating aesthetic to a range of frameworks. (Case in point: One of his most powerful albums actually has no kick drums at all.) In recent years, Moeller’s music has sped up considerably, ratcheting up from 120 BPM house and techno rhythms to the 170 BPM thrust of drum’n’bass. He found a new identity in that tempo, divorced from the occasional baggage and sameyness that discouraged him early in his career. On Shadow Language, Moeller sounds like no one but himself, making some…
Gaudi’s Jazz Gone Dub is an exercise in wedding modern jazz and dub reggae. Created and recorded over four years, it’s saturated in heavy dub rhythms, killer solos, glorious melodies and canny production. The illustrious lineup includes the late rhythm section of Sly & Robbie, guitarists Ernest Ranglin and David Hinds (Steel Pulse), and others including bassists Jah Wobble and Colin Edwin, saxophonist/flutist Gavin Tate-Lovery, trumpeter/trombonist Tim Hutton, and reggae drummer Horseman (Winston Williams), among them. Gaudi plays piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B-3, glockenspiel, santoor, and taishōgoto harp. The set was recorded in London and Sardinia by Papa Ntò. Sly & Robbie and Ranglin were recorded at Kingston’s legendary Tuff Gong.
British reggae artist Dennis Bovell had his own sensibilities when it came to production. Active in the same vibrant era in the late ’70s that created some of reggae’s most lasting sounds, his take on reggae and dub was a little more reined in than his Jamaican contemporaries like King Tubby or Lee “Scratch” Perry. While his production was less chaotic, with clearer details and space made for every rebound of echo and thunderclap of reverb, Bovell’s style wasn’t lacking in excitement or daring. The anthology collection Different: The Singles Collection 1977-1981 zeros in on his unique and wide-ranging style as a studio mastermind, presenting Bovell productions originally released as singles that run the gamut from roots reggae tunes to lovers rock…
If you’re into roots reggae or dub, you’ve probably heard the names The Revolutionaries and Roots Radics tossed around more than once. These two bands shaped the sound of Jamaican music in ways that still echo today.
The Revolutionaries, sometimes called the Mighty Revolutionaries, came together in 1975 as Channel One Studio’s in-house band. The Hoo Kim brothers ran that studio, and it became a serious hub for creativity. The group helped define the tight, driving rockers style riddims that gave reggae a fresh, energetic edge. Sly Dunbar’s crisp drumming and Ranchie McLean’s heavy basslines set the pace, while also players like Robbie Shakespeare, Dougie Bryan, Robbie Lyn, and Ansel Collins added their own spice. Between 1975 and…
…includes seven bonus tracks.
South London sound system owner Lloyd Coxsone ably assisted in raising the Royals’ profile in the U.K., eagerly spinning dub plates of the group’s Ten Years After album. The attention helped Royals’ frontman/producer Roy Cousins land a deal with United Artists, whose Ballistic imprint eventually picked up both that vocal set and Israel Be Wise, as well as Freedom Fighters Dub (a set Cousins dedicated to Coxsone in gratitude) and Liberated Dub. The latter set was Israel‘s counterpart, and what it lacked in imagination for track titles (did someone leave a map of Kingston and its environs on the mixing desk?), was more than made up for the music within. Israel was produced by Cousins himself, with the riddims…
The history of music is full of artists who have cultivated a certain mythos around themselves and their work. Whether it’s Aphex Twin’s legends of buying bank vaults and driving into parked vehicles in an armoured car, or Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology and claims to hail from Saturn – creating and feeding a lore around yourself rarely hurts.
Enter Elijah Minnelli, a UK dub producer with a studied sense of mystery around him and a story about hailing from a fictional locale called Breadminster – or something. When you strip back the slightly try-hard quirkiness of the image, what you have is a producer creating a highly inventive and often psychedelic take on dub that draws elements of folk and other genres into its heady brew. After a string of singles…
Implosion is a purely instrumental, collaborative album of cinematic, dystopian sounds from dubstepper and extreme electronica experimentalist the Bug and his pal Ghost Dubs. However, rather than working on the same tracks together, as could be implied, they have each applied their production know-how to alternate tunes on the two discs that make up this recording.
That isn’t to say that the sounds on Implosion swing from one flavour to another and back again. This is an album with a singular vision that is consistently eerie and sinister and has much in common with early 1990s ambient techno heads Sun Electric and the Sabres of Paradise, as well as Kevin Richard Martin’s (the Bug’s given name) alternative film soundtrack…
Sooner or later, everyone who loves dub techno becomes acquainted with the gossamer tenor of Paul St. Hilaire. His voice gets stretched and pulled across so many of the greatest records in the genre, from his early collabs with Basic Channel’s Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald to his rousing appearance on Intrusion’s late-period benchmark The Seduction of Silence in 2009. As befits a style whose exponents obscure themselves behind stark record sleeves and inscrutable aliases, the artist formerly known as Tikiman — born on the Caribbean island of Dominica but based in Berlin — has been modest about his importance. “I prefer to say a little ting and stay out of the light,” he told Resident Advisor’s Richard Akingbehin in a 2021 feature, but since striking up…
…Featuring 6 previously unissued studio recordings and 7 previously unreleased live recordings.
Released at the dawn of the 21st Century, On the Wire marked the long awaited return of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s to Trojan Records, 14 years after the company had issued his powerful come-back long-player, Battle of Armagideon.
Demonstrating The Upsetter’s eccentric and innovative approach to music-making, the 2000 album comprises a compelling blend of weird and wonderful sounds, over which he delivers typically unpredictable yet captivating lyrics that range from the profound to the absurd.
Upon its release, the Trojan collection was comprehensively praised, with many critics proclaiming Scratch was finally back to his…
London’s The Lo Yo Yo was conceptualized by John “Alig” Pearce in 1984 after his primary group, the deservedly legendary Family Fodder, went dormant. Soon enough a few others were enlisted to round out the quartet, including Mick Hobbs of The Work and Officer! fame, alongside friends Joey Stack and Carrie Brooks. The Lo Yo Yo took elements from their other groups and, in the tradition of somewhat like-minded acts like The Raincoats, Naffi and Amos & Sara, added a strong dub/reggae element.
Shortly before their lone studio LP, which was recorded by Charles Bullen of This Heat fame, the band self-recorded a demo tape at home on an eight track reel to reel, reissued here on vinyl for the first time by Concentric Circles.
UK dub maestro and producer, Adrian Sherwood is hardly what anyone might call a slacker, but it’s 13 years since the release of his last solo album, Survival and Resistance. Those who have been eagerly anticipating more of his particular take on one of Jamaica’s greatest musical exports, however, need wait no longer.
While The Collapse of Everything doesn’t offer too many surprises to those familiar with the On-U Sound, it does bring in plenty of other textures along the way. Smouldering, moody and intoxicating, it is an album that may not hit the extremes of some of Sherwood’s previous collaborations, but it does have more than enough to earn some space in any dub set.
Indeed, the presence of fellow travellers…
The Fateful Symmetry is the posthumous eighth solo album by the groundbreaking and influential artist Mark Stewart, completed shortly before his passing in April 2023. It is set to be released on July 11, 2025, on Mute, his long-standing label.
Across an illustrious career of pioneering music with The Pop Group, Mark Stewart & The Maffia and as a solo artist, Stewart has produced a seminal body of work, galvanized by the DIY ideals of punk, radical politics, protest movements, theory, philosophy, technology, art and poetry.
With The Fateful Symmetry, Stewart’s abiding legacy as a ‘“revered countercultural musician” (The Guardian) is sustained, with an album as fearless and visionary as his best work.
Testifying to his prolific, unrelenting ingenuity,…