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Dennis Bovell’s prolific and eclectic career encompasses a huge range of music: from dub poetry to lovers rock to post-punk to disco to pop and beyond. His production work encompasses such diverse figures as The Slits, I Roy, Maximum Joy, Fela Kuti, The Pop Group, Janet Kay, Saada Bonaire, Orange Juice, Golden Teacher, Steel Pulse and more.
This compilation focuses on the period during and immediately after Bovell’s involvement with the Jah Sufferer Sound System, digging deep to find deep cuts and lesser known versions, mainly from 1976 - 1980, plus a killer and lesser heard dub of the iconic “Silly Games”. Painstakingly restored and remastered at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin so that these decades old tracks sound pristine and dynamic, and sequenced to take the listener on a journey through Bovell’s production and arrangement genius.
The accompanying sleevenotes are a result of a long conversation with Dennis about this period of his life, with track-by-track recollections and fascinating biographical asides. The vinyl and CD versions feature variant artwork, each format utilising a unique photo by Syd Shelton.
Dennis Bovell is a genius who cannot be ignored when talking about British reggae. This compilation of his most core and rare songs from the lovers rock recordings he produced in the 1970s and 1980s is now available on LP for the first time!
Dennis Bovell is a producer, musician and engineer who is indispensable when talking about British reggae. In 2008, P-Vine compiled the best tracks from Dennis' master recordings titled "Reborn British Reggae" under the supervision of Haruyasu Kudo BIG'H, and released "The British Core Lovers" on LP for the first time. This album is packed with recordings that will make any reggae fan drool, including Marie Pierre's lovers cover of the Young Rascals' "Groovin'," a classic that has been covered by many musicians including Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, and was also cut into a 7-inch version!
■Track list
SIDE A:
A1. DELROY WILSON - Hooked On You
A2. THE DUB BAND - Ang Up
A3. JANET KAY - Can't Give It Up
A4. STEVE GREGORY - Sax It Up (Instrumental - Sax)
SIDE B:
B1. DENNIS MATUMBI - Raindrops
B2. DB AT THE CONTROLS - Eye Water
B3. LOUISA MARK - Gone Out
B4. PAUL DAWKINS - To Love Someone
SIDE C:
C1. PAUL DAWKINS - Ready To Dance
C2. JULIO FINN - Nasty
C3. MARI PIERRE - Walk Away
C4. MARI PIERRE - Say A Little Prayer
SIDE D:
D1. MARI PIERRE - Groovin'
D2. ROLAND G - Hear It Through The Grapevine
D3. VIOLA WILLS - Keep On Coming
D4. 4TH STREET ORCHESTRA - Hawaii Five O
Another sterling piece of improv history from Incus via Honest Jon’s, this time Derek Bailey’s spellbinding, teetering excursion with legendary percussionist Jamie Muir (King Crimson), who previously collaborated in The Music Improvisation Company. Less jarring, more wildly fluid and flowing into thrilling new spaces, from tribal rhythms to the kitchen sink…
“Percussionist Jamie Muir was a member of King Crimson during the recording of Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, in 1973. Staying less than a year with Robert Fripp, the Scot had already cut his teeth with another master guitarist, Derek Bailey, as part of the Music Improvisation Company, along with Evan Parker, Hugh Davies and Christine Jeffrey, whose eponymous 1970 album was one of the first releases on ECM. Muir and Bailey recorded Dart Drug eleven years later, in 1981.
There’s no shortage of great percussionists in the brief history of free improvised music but on the strength of Dart Drug alone Jamie Muir deserves a place at High Table. Unlike for example Han Bennink and John Stevens, though, you can’t hear echoes of any particular jazz drummer in Muir’s playing, even if he has expressed appreciation for Milford Graves (who himself sounded like nobody else who’d come before him).
What on earth did Muir’s kit consist of? Some instruments are clearly identifiable (bells, gongs, chimes, woodblocks); others could be… well, anything. Old suitcases thwacked with rolled up newspapers? Tin cans and hubcaps inside a washing machine? Who cares? It sounds terrific – but if you’re the kind of person who faints at the sound of nails scraping a blackboard, you might want to nip out and put the kettle on towards the end of the title track.
Dart Drug is consistently thrilling, and often very amusing – but it’s certainly not easy listening. In music we talk about playing with other musicians, whereas in sport you play against another opponent (or with your team against another team). Why not play against in music, too? That’s precisely what happens very often in improvised music, and Bailey was particularly good at it. How can a humble acoustic guitar hope to compete with a Muir in full flight? Sometimes Bailey’s content to sit on those open strings, teasing out yet another exquisite Webernian constellation of ringing harmonics and wait for the dust to settle in Muir’s junkyard, but elsewhere he sets off into uncharted territory himself.
“The way to discover the undiscovered in performing terms is to immediately reject all situations as you identify them (the cloud of unknowing) – which is to give music a future.” Bailey evidently concurred with this spoken statement by Muir, including it in his book Improvisation.
Derek Bailey is no longer with us, of course, and Muir gave up performing music back in 1989. All the more reason for seeking out this magnificent, wild album.
Very hotly recommended.”
Derek Bailey’s incredible debut solo showcase is given a necessary, expanded reissue as part of Honest Jon’s reissue series of important releases on Bailey and Evan Parker’s Incus Records. The original LP of finger-flaying improvisations and Bailey’s takes on works by Gavin Bryars and Misha Mengelberg is now augmented by an extra disc of farther improvs, including a solo show at York University in 1972. The late, great guitar pioneer’s Solo Guitar remains pivotal testament to his endeavours in dismantling modern instrumental music and freeing it to more curious routes of expression, much in key - so to speak - with the US free jazz and improvised music which it evolved from. Love it or not, this record remains a totem of late 20th centre musical exploration. “Recorded in 1971, Solo Guitar Volume 1 was Bailey’s first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return. The LP was issued in two versions over the years — Incus 2 and 2R — with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey’s performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars and Willem Breuker. All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972; a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music. It’s a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence and wit.”
When Cyro Baptista moved to New York in 1980 from his home city of São Paulo, he brought with him an arsenal of percussion instruments, including the cuica (friction drum), surdo (the booming bass drum associated with samba), berimbau (single-string bow with resonating gourd), and cabasas galore, in the next few years deploying them most notably in numerous ensembles curated by John Zorn, who helped set up this studio session in 1982.
As you might expect from someone whose infectious grooves have graced the work of Herbie Hancock, Astrud Gilberto and Cassandra Wilson, Baptista expertly fires off cunning polyrhythms, even traces of thumping samba, with restless fluency. Bailey the wily old fox skirts and eschews the bait, which is quickly conjured away and newly fashioned. The guitarist homes in on the delicious squeaks of the cuica and the twanging drones of the berimbau with truly awesome tonal precision. You could sing along if you wanted, after a caipirinha or two. And he gets almost as many different sounds from his instrument as Baptista can from his kit – check out the stratospheric plings and string-length fret-sweeps of Tonto, which sound more like a prepared piano than an acoustic guitar.
Wonders abound, from the berimbau/bent-string exchanges that open Quanto Tempo to the delightful collision of howling cuica and spiky bebop on Polvo, and the spare, preposterous Webernian samba of Improvisation 3. These days, ‘improvisation’ often appears without its customary qualifier ‘free’. If there were ever a case to be made for its reinstatement, this album is the best supporting evidence. Freedom means you’re free to get into the groove, free not to, free to play with each other, free to play against each other. Sometimes frustrating, even scary, but more often than not in the hands of these two great masters it’s hilarious, exhilarating and utterly irresistible.
A timeless masterpiece live album recorded by Derek Bailey, one of Britain's leading free improvisation giants, in Paris and London and released on his own label, Incus in 1980, by Honest Jon's with the addition of two unsound sources. The first vinyl reissue!
Just twisting space-time, devilish performances, thrilling moments. Audience alarm? Even if it is interrupted at, it does not bother me at all, and even that is taken in as an element, and there is also a performance that can afford to tighten it perfectly. You can feel some kind of elegance in Bailey's performances that are completely mature. An overwhelming spiritual pressure improvisation sound derived from endless self-questioning and self-answering. 2 additional unreleased tracks are included. If you like music, you shouldn't end up with an unexperienced masterpiece of the century.