MUSIC

Liminal space – We all know it, a familiar friend. The haze we slip into on our way to sleep. That warmth on your eyelids you feel when you turn your face to the sun and drift out of time for a few minutes. Those moments of stillness that belong to you in the sacred minutes before the alarm goes off, before you are fully able to acknowledge the outside world that waits on you like some hungry panther, eyeing you from strange trees. Inhabiting this zone is a luxury, but the best sort of liminality lives in a very specific dream space, one we spend the rest of our lives chasing: The deep sleep that most children know. Somewhere between familiar household sounds and being carried to your own bed, there’s the quiet that only belongs to you and some dream self – someone that you haven’t met yet, but that you make future plans for and secret promises to. June McDoom’s debut full-length, Follow the Light, feels exactly like exploring this space and pushing forward, slipping out of time and waking up someplace new, a place that’s barely familiar enough to feel like home but somehow already wholly personal and meant for you alone. June grew up in a Jamaican household in South Florida, an existence built of strong extended family, communal care, bass and harmonics. Her father, a carpenter and student of sound all his own, built his own speakers and maintained no less than three sound systems across as many rooms. The bass from his solitary DJ sets would sneak its way through her bedroom floor, making itself at home like some wayward cat as she listened to folk records, finding harmonies that were new and special to her. On the edge of the Florida Everglades, two musics in one room, meshing into something indescribable. Lushness as past and premonition. The low end of where she comes from, and the high, gentle harmony of what she would eventually seek out, sharing the same humid air. She would find folk music on her own, somewhere between the cast recording of The Sound of Music and Simon and Garfunkel’s contributions to The Graduate, all the while nobody around her listening to it and her parents referring to it as “that sleepy music.” She did not mind being the only one; the solitude afforded her the opportunity to fall in love with harmony first, before words, before anything else. Harmony is the thing that reaches her, and now it is the thing she effortlessly reaches for. You will hear it all over this album, with chords opening up to greet you before you have any idea what she’s singing about. Yet and still, an elder also traveled a similar path: Her grandfather, Colin Smith, was a distinguished mento man who played banjo and guitar, built his own rumba boxes and worked hard to keep Jamaica’s oldest form of rural acoustic folk music and storytelling alive. Mento is the genre at the root of all of it – we have the form to thank for ska, rock steady, reggae, dub and everything that came after, and he is the one who put a guitar in her hands. An inheritance, a gift and a map. Even her name is part of it, though she will tell you she landed on it more by feel than reason. She records as June McDoom, born Alyssa, June being a nickname one of her grandmothers, Joan, went by, a name she thought was cool to carry and simply liked the sound of. An etheric channel that reverberates all the same. A dub all its own. For years, this was just the sound of her family, a comfort and constant companion that did not yet feel as if it also belonged to her. It took going out into the world, living, loving, learning and coming back home, to find that she had earnestly built a full life of her own – and that there was a sound to meet it. She put on an Alton Ellis record one day and realized the soundshe had been seeking had been there her whole life, a steady groove meant to hold anyone with ears and heart enough to listen. She set out to create and ended up making music that held space for all of the sounds and feelings that she loved. Not a reggae or dub record, not a folk record, but the harmony of one laid over the rhythm of the other. Sonic liminality, echoed out into the cosmos in some places. She and her longtime partner, Evan Wright, created the songs slowly, by hand. Songcraft for the pair meant stacking parts over time, chasing texture, exercising restraint in their explorations, keeping things minimal on purpose. Nearly every one began as just her voice and a guitar before the two of them fleshed it out, Evan playing most of the instruments while June layered in the vocal harmonies she so loves to arrange. They opened the record by cutting live drums with Victor Axelrod, the producer who records as Ticklah, down in his Sunset Park basement, then carried the songs home and built the rest themselves across long days in the studio they keep at home, tracking to tape and digital both, even hauling out to a friend’s house for the harp. Dub and Wall of Sound influencing the low end, with echoes of Dionne Warwick, Minnie Riperton, Pentangle and the washy, stellar guitars of Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand haunting the outer edges of what her sound would shapeshift into. Angelic heroics, and nothing less. It was not easy, by any stretch. A casual listener won’t know that she spent twelve hours a day mixing because she wanted perfection, or that she started the process over when, on a Christmas visit, her parents told her that they couldn’t hear enough of her vocals. “Without You,” the album’s lead single, carries the fingerprints of that patience: it began with live drums running straight through and slowly became something else entirely, the deeper she steeped it in Cocteau Twins, until a dub bassline and a shoegaze shimmer met in the middle, in the last place you would think to look for either one. That was the standard she wanted to meet and surpass – but you, listener, will only hear a record that could have gone overboard but didn’t. Generous in its way, it invites you in as an active participant on the path, leaving room for you instead of telling you how to feel. At the heart, the core of all of this, is June’s grandmother Aggie. She formed the center, both in family and in this recording – a guide for June in moments of stillness, in moments of uncertainty, and at the edges that she wants to keep close. Indeed, the song “Memory” was written with her in mind. That is the light making its way through the pinhole in this camera of the mind, the guide that helps June to focus, to see and to step forward confidently. People who love you showing the way, their energy still present and shining even when their form has moved on. There’s a harder, quieter undercurrent that moves through this album – one that June explores in “Outside the Window.” There are so many different iterations of a self, all belonging to so many different sets of people and realities. What obligation do you have to them, and can you meet all of the promises that you made to yourself in those sleepy, hazy moments when you pretended you weren’t a kid anymore? What is authenticity? Who defines that? Who do you owe it to? What do you owe yourself? These are questions that prowl around the corners of the overthinking artist’s mind when creating an album this intimate, this exacting, this personal. You’re learning how to be a person in public while keeping a degree of interiority all of your own, trying to make sure that you don’t let your life pass you by as you’re trying to meet your own standards. Future You is an ancestor that your current self gets to meet. As June layers these songs, she is figuring out who she is in real time. The album holds that answer, and offers it to you, the listener, as well. It knows that none of us are just one person, but a multitude of people we’ve had to let go of, kill off, commit to meeting at a future date and time. A continuum: There’s an entire lineage of selves that we all carry with us each day, and others that we will eventually meet. We are reaching back to those people and waving hello to them at the same time, along with the lineages of people who helped to shape us and get us here. A collection of people and things that don’t seem to go together, but we let them in anyway. Dark. Light. Equals. Opposites. All there in sound, in spirit, in daily action. We turn into the light when things feel dark. We get used to feeling around for it if we can’t see it. We let the warmth of it hit our faces and slowly open eyes to see.

Liminal space – We all know it, a familiar friend. The haze we slip into on our way to sleep. That warmth on your eyelids you feel when you turn your face to the sun and drift out of time for a few minutes. Those moments of stillness that belong to you in the sacred minutes before the alarm goes off, before you are fully able to acknowledge the outside world that waits on you like some hungry panther, eyeing you from strange trees. Inhabiting this zone is a luxury, but the best sort of liminality lives in a very specific dream space, one we spend the rest of our lives chasing: The deep sleep that most children know. Somewhere between familiar household sounds and being carried to your own bed, there’s the quiet that only belongs to you and some dream self – someone that you haven’t met yet, but that you make future plans for and secret promises to. June McDoom’s debut full-length, Follow the Light, feels exactly like exploring this space and pushing forward, slipping out of time and waking up someplace new, a place that’s barely familiar enough to feel like home but somehow already wholly personal and meant for you alone. June grew up in a Jamaican household in South Florida, an existence built of strong extended family, communal care, bass and harmonics. Her father, a carpenter and student of sound all his own, built his own speakers and maintained no less than three sound systems across as many rooms. The bass from his solitary DJ sets would sneak its way through her bedroom floor, making itself at home like some wayward cat as she listened to folk records, finding harmonies that were new and special to her. On the edge of the Florida Everglades, two musics in one room, meshing into something indescribable. Lushness as past and premonition. The low end of where she comes from, and the high, gentle harmony of what she would eventually seek out, sharing the same humid air. She would find folk music on her own, somewhere between the cast recording of The Sound of Music and Simon and Garfunkel’s contributions to The Graduate, all the while nobody around her listening to it and her parents referring to it as “that sleepy music.” She did not mind being the only one; the solitude afforded her the opportunity to fall in love with harmony first, before words, before anything else. Harmony is the thing that reaches her, and now it is the thing she effortlessly reaches for. You will hear it all over this album, with chords opening up to greet you before you have any idea what she’s singing about. Yet and still, an elder also traveled a similar path: Her grandfather, Colin Smith, was a distinguished mento man who played banjo and guitar, built his own rumba boxes and worked hard to keep Jamaica’s oldest form of rural acoustic folk music and storytelling alive. Mento is the genre at the root of all of it – we have the form to thank for ska, rock steady, reggae, dub and everything that came after, and he is the one who put a guitar in her hands. An inheritance, a gift and a map. Even her name is part of it, though she will tell you she landed on it more by feel than reason. She records as June McDoom, born Alyssa, June being a nickname one of her grandmothers, Joan, went by, a name she thought was cool to carry and simply liked the sound of. An etheric channel that reverberates all the same. A dub all its own. For years, this was just the sound of her family, a comfort and constant companion that did not yet feel as if it also belonged to her. It took going out into the world, living, loving, learning and coming back home, to find that she had earnestly built a full life of her own – and that there was a sound to meet it. She put on an Alton Ellis record one day and realized the soundshe had been seeking had been there her whole life, a steady groove meant to hold anyone with ears and heart enough to listen. She set out to create and ended up making music that held space for all of the sounds and feelings that she loved. Not a reggae or dub record, not a folk record, but the harmony of one laid over the rhythm of the other. Sonic liminality, echoed out into the cosmos in some places. She and her longtime partner, Evan Wright, created the songs slowly, by hand. Songcraft for the pair meant stacking parts over time, chasing texture, exercising restraint in their explorations, keeping things minimal on purpose. Nearly every one began as just her voice and a guitar before the two of them fleshed it out, Evan playing most of the instruments while June layered in the vocal harmonies she so loves to arrange. They opened the record by cutting live drums with Victor Axelrod, the producer who records as Ticklah, down in his Sunset Park basement, then carried the songs home and built the rest themselves across long days in the studio they keep at home, tracking to tape and digital both, even hauling out to a friend’s house for the harp. Dub and Wall of Sound influencing the low end, with echoes of Dionne Warwick, Minnie Riperton, Pentangle and the washy, stellar guitars of Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand haunting the outer edges of what her sound would shapeshift into. Angelic heroics, and nothing less. It was not easy, by any stretch. A casual listener won’t know that she spent twelve hours a day mixing because she wanted perfection, or that she started the process over when, on a Christmas visit, her parents told her that they couldn’t hear enough of her vocals. “Without You,” the album’s lead single, carries the fingerprints of that patience: it began with live drums running straight through and slowly became something else entirely, the deeper she steeped it in Cocteau Twins, until a dub bassline and a shoegaze shimmer met in the middle, in the last place you would think to look for either one. That was the standard she wanted to meet and surpass – but you, listener, will only hear a record that could have gone overboard but didn’t. Generous in its way, it invites you in as an active participant on the path, leaving room for you instead of telling you how to feel. At the heart, the core of all of this, is June’s grandmother Aggie. She formed the center, both in family and in this recording – a guide for June in moments of stillness, in moments of uncertainty, and at the edges that she wants to keep close. Indeed, the song “Memory” was written with her in mind. That is the light making its way through the pinhole in this camera of the mind, the guide that helps June to focus, to see and to step forward confidently. People who love you showing the way, their energy still present and shining even when their form has moved on. There’s a harder, quieter undercurrent that moves through this album – one that June explores in “Outside the Window.” There are so many different iterations of a self, all belonging to so many different sets of people and realities. What obligation do you have to them, and can you meet all of the promises that you made to yourself in those sleepy, hazy moments when you pretended you weren’t a kid anymore? What is authenticity? Who defines that? Who do you owe it to? What do you owe yourself? These are questions that prowl around the corners of the overthinking artist’s mind when creating an album this intimate, this exacting, this personal. You’re learning how to be a person in public while keeping a degree of interiority all of your own, trying to make sure that you don’t let your life pass you by as you’re trying to meet your own standards. Future You is an ancestor that your current self gets to meet. As June layers these songs, she is figuring out who she is in real time. The album holds that answer, and offers it to you, the listener, as well. It knows that none of us are just one person, but a multitude of people we’ve had to let go of, kill off, commit to meeting at a future date and time. A continuum: There’s an entire lineage of selves that we all carry with us each day, and others that we will eventually meet. We are reaching back to those people and waving hello to them at the same time, along with the lineages of people who helped to shape us and get us here. A collection of people and things that don’t seem to go together, but we let them in anyway. Dark. Light. Equals. Opposites. All there in sound, in spirit, in daily action. We turn into the light when things feel dark. We get used to feeling around for it if we can’t see it. We let the warmth of it hit our faces and slowly open eyes to see.

Classic Studio One instrumentals featured on Lennie Hibbert's essential album, including the spellbinding Roselen and bonus versions of Twilight Zone and Village Soul.

One of the finest vocal groups of the rocksteady and early reggae periods of Jamaican music, the Heptones first drew attention for the singles and albums they cut for Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One label during the late '60s. Poised on the cusp of a cultural shift, Leroy Sibbles (also a bass-wielding session man for Dodd) and partners Barry Llewellyn and Earl Morgan tackled a combination of the sort of pained love songs then in vogue and fresher "reality" material, a mix arguably heard best on On Top.

There are a dozen nice sultry instrumentals on this LP, released in the early '70s, though as always with vintage reggae albums, that doesn't necessarily indicate that all of the material was recorded then. Certainly it has the sound of the best rocksteady music, some of its trancier grooves hinting at the dub era.

Copilot said: A compilation of essential 1970s recordings by pioneering female reggae singer Jennifer Lara, who contributed session vocals and harmonies to numerous classics for the legendary Studio One label. Showcasing the warmth, depth, and unmistakable presence of one of Jamaican music's most underrated voices, this collection highlights a key figure in the evolution of reggae and rocksteady.

Joe Gibbs' 1979 album Majestic Dub stands as a unique and innovative take on the sound of Dub. The album opens with "Ten Commandments," an energetic track featuring prominent use of synthesizers, blending early techno influences with dub rhythms. This departure from the typical sound showcases Gibbs' ambition to modernize reggae without overusing electronic elements. The title track, "Majestic Dub," highlights the rhythmic prowess of the legendary Sly and Robbie, grounding the music with a strong reggae foundation while also experimenting with electronic drums, further pushing the sonic boundaries. As the album progresses, tracks like "Social Justice" and "Kings of Dub" continue to explore new textures. "Social Justice" introduces a synthesizer subtly woven into the rhythm, enhancing the track's depth and layering. In contrast, "Kings of Dub" feels lighter and more traditionally reggae, its smooth rhythms and precise production feel more grounded. These tracks exemplify Gibbs' ability to balance innovation with respect for reggae’s roots, allowing a variety of influences and styles to shine through without overwhelming the core dub essence. The album concludes with powerful tracks like "Edward the Eighth" and "Embargo," which return to more orthodox dub sounds while incorporating dynamic effects such as echo and delay. These final songs capture the essence of Majestic Dub, where traditional reggae rhythms meet modern production techniques. Gibbs' collaboration with top-tier musicians, including Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, and Tommy McCook, adds further depth to an already rich soundscape. Altogether, Majestic Dub serves as a bold, forward-thinking album that not only honors the roots of dub but also pushes it into exciting new territory.

Chanting Dub with The Help of the Father a rare original rockers release featuring the rockers all stars

Re-up of Lee Perry’s cult late ‘70s works, as first issued in ’84, manipulating rhythms by the T.N.T. Players aka The Upsetters during his legendary Black Ark phase, and including a scalp-tingling dub of The Congos’ ‘Fisherman’. Back by demand for the first time since the early ‘90s, ‘Megaton Dub 2’ follows in the wake of Studio 16’s ‘Disco Devil’ reissues with some of The Upsetter’s most haunting, incomparable gear. Practically worth the price of entry alone for the spangled dub of ‘Fisherman’, his iconic production for the vocal harmony trio, the LP’s pleasures also reach to the peppery nyabinghi drums on ‘Zion in Dub’, the super slow and wide ‘Groovy Dub’ bathed in FX, and a standout steppa ‘Green Bay Killing’, featuring one of the earliest appearances on record by Lord Sassafras, who would become a major dancehall deejay in the ‘80s.

1972 masterpiece by Phyllis Dillon, one of the most iconic Rocksteady singers. A total　12 tunes sung neatly in a rocksteady manner with sweet melodies and slow rhythms.

Recorded at Black Ark Studio, Kingston Jamaica and features some of Perry's most cavernous and deep dubs. Far reaching dimensional frequency riding of a spiritual vibration and inspirational quality. Technical virtuosity and experrymentation at the service of beauty and wonder.

Ewart Brown aka Cobra (later, and more prolifically known as Mad Cobra) released the Goldmine LP in 1993 for Prince Jazzbo's Ujama label. This is the first LP pressing for a collection of dubbed out versions in Jazzbo's inimitable prouction style, showcasing the talents of engineer Albert Thompson aka Junior Chemist at I&I recording studios, alongside Delroy Thompson otherwise known as the prolific mastering engineer Spiderman

The third (and most impressive) of four volumes of dub mixes from the studio of producer Joe Gibbs, African Dub, Chapter 3 finds engineer Errol Thompson getting a bit more adventurous than he had on the earlier installments. More of these dub versions keep shreds and snatches of the original vocal tracks in the mix, which is almost always a plus in a dub context -- little snippets of disembodied vocals float through the otherworldly musical atmosphere, lending a sometimes spooky human element to the sound and often casting new and refracted light on the meaning of the original lyrics. And on this volume, Thompson seems to be taking a few cues from his competitor Lee "Scratch" Perry, throwing such extramusical elements as water sounds (on "Freedom Call") and ringing telephones (on "Jubilation Dub") into the mix along with the usual gossamer shreds of guitar, horn, and keyboard. Highly recommended. - Rick Anderson

Producer Joe Gibbs took the credit for the four discs released in the mid-'70s under the title African Dub All-Mighty, but the musicians were in reality a shifting aggregation of members of the Soul Syndicate, We the People, and Revolutionaries bands, and the man actually working the mixing board was famed sound engineer Errol Thompson. Chapter 1 is a fine listening experience -- note in particular "Campus Rock" (a dub version of Dennis Brown's "Let Me Live") and "Treasure Dub," which is a version of the Jamaicans' rocksteady classic "Ba Ba Boom." Recommended. - Rick Anderson

In the late 1960s, Canada’s largest city was musically booming as Caribbean immigrants made Toronto their new home. The finest ska, rocksteady, and reggae recording artists of the era—Studio One, Treasure Isle, and Trojan Records originators—simply did what came naturally to them. One by one, they hit the studio and captured some of the toughest tunes this side of Kingston. Collectively, they broke down racial and cultural barriers to form an unprecedented and little-known Canadian reggae community. Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk, & Reggae 1967-1974 details this crucial sonic migration.

Prince Mohammed’s Inna Him Head is a 1980 reggae classic arranged by Joe Gibbs and featuring the formidable rhythm section of Sly and Robbie. Rooted in the sound of Jamaican reggae at the turn of the decade, it combines Prince Mohammed’s distinctive vocal style with Gibbs’ production know-how and the duo’s heavyweight bass and drums.

The second volume in this vintage four-disc series of instrumental dub from Joe Gibbs' studio finds him still working with members of the Soul Syndicate and We the People bands, and utilizing the formidable mixing talents of Errol Thompson. What sets this volume somewhat apart from the other three is the number of rhythms it carries over from the rocksteady era: "Chapter Two" is a remix of the Techniques' late-'60s classic "Queen Majesty"; "Peeping Tom" reworks the Melodians' "You Have Caught Me"; and "My Best Dub" is an instrumental and nicely dubbed-up recut of the early Wailers track "Hypocrites." But it also includes some heavyweight rockers and one-drop material, including "Angola Crisis" (based on a familiar rhythm later used for such roots reggae hits as "Uptown Top Ranking" and "Three Piece Suit") and an absolutely brilliant dub mix of Bob Andy's "Chained," here rendered in dark, minimalist tones with drastic dubwise effects and retitled "Third World." Along with the third volume, this is one of the most impressive of the four discs in the African Dub series. - Rick Anderson

The fourth and final volume in the African Dub All-Mighty series was originally released in 1979, and like the previous three discs it features rhythm tracks laid down by such famous session men as Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Lloyd Parks, and Franklin "Bubblers" Waul, most of whom were already known as members of the Revolutionaries and the We the People band, but who recorded at Joe Gibbs' studio as the Professionals. Errol Thompson ran the board for all four collections of dub mixes, and offers an interesting and adventurous approach. Some of these mixes are two or three times removed from the vocal tracks that were originally released -- "Iron Gate," for example, is a dub mix of a recut (by Althea & Donna) of the Heptones' proto-slack rocksteady classic "Fattie Fattie"; "Fashion One" is a remix of Dennis Brown's remake of Alton Ellis' 1960s classic "Girl I've Got a Date." Everything here is worth a listen, recommended overall. - Rick Anderson

Joe Gibbs reggae dub series "African Dub Chapter". this chapter 5 was originally released in 1984.

"Phil Pratt (George Phillips Pratt) was an influential figure in the Jamaican music industry, recognized for his work as a producer, singer, and songwriter. Beginning his career in the 1960s as a vocalist, he soon transitioned into production, becoming an important contributor to Jamaica's golden era of reggae throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As a producer, Pratt worked with leading artists including Al Campbell, Dennis Brown, Horace Andy, and Ken Boothe, creating recordings that became foundational to the reggae genre. His production credits include notable releases such as The War Is On, as well as key tracks like Dennis Brown's 'Money in My Pocket' and Horace Andy's 'You Are My Angel.' Pratt's production legacy -- defined by his ear for melody, rhythm, and artist collaboration -- continues to hold significant influence in reggae history. Phil Pratt has since passed away, but his work remains widely respected and celebrated. Originally released by Burning Sounds in 1978, Star Wars Dub highlights Pratt's distinctive production style. This new edition faithfully reissues the album, featuring an insert with sleeve notes and pressing on limited edition 180gram Purple Transparent vinyl."

Strut present the first ever official compilation bringing together the complete in-demand reggae / disco singles of Risco Connection between 1979 and 1980.

Drummer “Drummie” Joe Isaacs had already created history as the house drummer at Studio 1 in Jamaica on countless pre-reggae classics before moving to Canada in 1968 and is credited with slowing down the fast pace of ska during the rocksteady era. With Risco Connection, Isaacs released a series of choice reggae / disco covers, from ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now’ and ‘Good Times’ to ‘I’m Caught Up (In A One Night Love Affair)’ and ‘It’s My House’ as limited 12” singles on his own Black Rose imprint. “Arriving in Canada, we were one of the first set of musicians out of Jamaica coming here,” explains Isaacs. “With Risco Connection, we wanted to try something new, songs that would have a crossover between disco and the rocksteady feeling and the right lyrics. We had trouble getting them well distributed widely at the time but people still picked up on the sound.”

Recorded at Glen Johansen’s small studio Integrated Sound in Toronto, musicians included Jamaican, US and Canadian players with Isaacs on drums and percussion, bassist Clarence Greer, guitarist Tony Campbell and keyboardist/singer Glen Ricketts. Isaacs also called on a number of great independent vocalists including Terry Hope (‘It’s My House’), Merlyn “Lorna” Brooks, (‘Caught Up’), Otis Gayle and Juliette Morgan (‘Bringing The Sun Out’ and ‘Sitting In The Park’) and Tobi Lark (‘Good Times’). The biggest hit of all the singles was Risco’s dynamite cover of McFadden and Whitehead’s ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now’. selling over 5,000 copies in Toronto and New York with the dub version becoming a firm favourite of David Mancuso at his famed Loft parties.

‘Risco Version’ brings together all of the vocal versions, dubs and extra tracks from the singles. Both formats feature an interview with Joe Isaacs and liner notes by journalist Angus Taylor. Audio is restored by Sean P and fully remastered and cut loud and proud by The Carvery. 

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 and musicians of the era, including Adrian Sherwood and the On-U Sound collective, bridging the gap between roots reggae and experimental dub and laying the groundwork for the fusion of Jamaican sounds with the vibrant underground scene in the UK. His career, from Kingston to London to Mumbai, was marked by an artistic daring and spiritual intensity that has earned him enduring respect across generations.

The centerpiece of this reissue campaign is Ghetto Dub from 1988, a record that distills Sherman’s artistry into its most potent form. Originally released in a limited number, the album embodies the stark yet soulful beauty of dub production. With its reverb-drenched drums, cavernous basslines, and echo-laden atmospherics, Ghetto Dub transforms Sherman’s various tracks into spectral presences that drift in and out of the mix. The arrangement and production—minimal yet profoundly textured—captures both the raw urgency of Jamaican street culture and the forward-looking experimentation of the UK dub scene. Each track unfolds like a meditation, balancing grit with grace, density with space. Ghetto Dub is more than an album; it is an immersive soundscape that reaffirms Bim Sherman as one of reggae’s most otherworldly and visionary figures.

Phillip Fullwood was born in Kingston, Jamaica, a cousin of bassist George ‘Fully’ Fullwood, before moving to the parish of Saint Ann’s, and then on to Linstead, Saint Catherine. Perhaps it was the importance of the region’s history with slavery that inspired him, but as a young man hanging around the local nyahbinghi community he started pursuing Rastafari.“I was twelve years old before my mother cut my dreadlocks. Cut my hair off my head. I was no rasta then, yunno. And then after a while I become rasta because I was hanging with guys like Sons of Negus and Ras Michael.”The move to St Catherine gave Phillip not only a spiritual direction in life, but also close friendships with two youths named Eric Donaldson and Freddie McKay.“We used to play together. Freddie know my father and my brother. I know his mother. She used to ride a donkey come to town to the market and go back to the country the next day. She was a poor luck lady. Didn’t have anything really. So me an’ Freddie become friends, yunno. Freddie McKay occupation was a painter and do entertainment on the side. He was a good stage actor, a good dancer. Eric Donaldson used to be a fisherman. He lived at a place called Bog Walk. I hear he have a club there now. But Freddie was my friend and him love singing. We used to stay over by Freddie little room. His girlfriend went to America and she sent a picture of her back to him. That’s why he sing ‘your picture is hanging on the wall’. Because of that picture. And the song become a hit.”Phillip’s first foray into song-writing came with ‘Old Joe’ for Freddie McKay, released on Freddie’s debut album for Studio One.“You know how I write that song? My father was town councillor and he had a man called Mr. James, he was kind of handicapped. Walk on his hands. One day I went over there and I asked Mr. James ‘Look man I’m hungry, I need some food’. Do you know what he told me? ‘Son if you can’t buy land you can’t buy stone and if you can’t buy beef you can’t buy bone.’ And he was eating a steak at the time. I started to cry. I went back over to Freddie’s house and there was a guy called Privy. He used to play with the Soul Defenders. They were cooking and I tell what the man said to me. And Privy said, ‘don’t you know Joe and Job is the same name?’ That’s why Freddie sing ‘You just can’t buy land if you can’t buy stone. Old Job I don’t want your job’. Yunno? That’s how I become a writer.”Phillip, now inspired to write poetry and song lyrics, travelled around the country selling African literature printed in London, getting a few cents for each publication sold. On one such trip he met the young Winston Rodney, aka Burning Spear, and was soon writing songs with Spear, and touring as a percussionist in his band. In America they recorded ‘The Whole World Wants To Be Free’ together, and also Phillip’s first lead vocal on ‘Love Everyone’, a longing plea for love and unity. His close relationship to Burning Spear gave Phillip valuable insight into studio work, and his move into production and mixing was inevitable, soon resulting in the profound self-production ‘I Gave You My Word’ in 1979, with arrangement and backing vocals by Winston Rodney.Also in 1979, Phillip met Winston McKenzie, with whom he would start the group I-Mo-Jah.“Imojah mean ‘Unity’ in Swahili. I used to do upholstery in a room I rented in a little dancehall and Winston’s mother used live cross the street from the beach and that’s how I met him. He come to America when he was 14. He’s from Saint Ann’s too. And when I come to America I used to stay at his house in New Rochelle, New York.”In 1982 Phillip moved to the US where the I-Mo-Jah group, which had been started in Jamaica, gained a third member with vocalist Cassandra Jenkins.“Cassandra lived around the block. She’s a young American girl, only sixteen at the time. I was in my thirties. I think Winston McKenzie was in his thirties. I don’t know where she’s at. She was a nice girl. She used to come over to Winston and hang out. Her parents never approve of her being around us either. She was in to reggae – a few Americans get into it.”While in the US, they started going over the rhythm tracks that Phillip had brought with him on master tape, deciding which to re-record and create news songs over. The backing tracks featured Jamaican musical dignitaries such as Sly and Robbie, Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace and Clive ‘Azul’ Hunt, and would form the backbone of the ‘Rockers From The Land Of Reggae’ album. New vocals were recorded at SFZ studio in Long Island and New Age Studio in Queens, with further overdubs on keyboards and lead guitar, and the album was mixed by Phillip.“Them give me the board and I do the mixing myself. I don’t know if it come out good or if it come out bad. I gave Spear a copy of the album and he said ‘yeah it sound good’. There was a man who played the music over the radio and Freddie McKay say ‘man, I hear the music play over the air - you sound good’, and I never continue after Freddie McKay tell me he heard the music playing. I was never meant to be a singer to tell you the truth.”The striking sleeve, in black and white with green handwritten typography, told the story of Jamaica, with Arawaks overseeing the arrival of Christopher Columbus’ ship Santa Maria, whilst between two sound systems the dreads were dancing and smoking a spliff under a tree. The art was drawn by Magnus Johnstone, a painter and deejay who presented the radio show ‘Reggae Mukasa’ on WMBR, and would later become the foremost champion of the burgeoning hip hop scene in Boston.“Yeah yeah! He used to live in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He used to have a radio program. He was living more over on the black side. When I used to go to his house we used to drink Guinness stout, smoke weed, and he had a big room with a lot of painting. And we went to an art gallery one night and I was scared because there was a lot of white people. I got used to it. I got a lot of white friends after that.”With its off-kilter mix and eccentric vocals, the I-Mo-Jah album was never destined for mainstream success. But its distribution was seriously derailed by some unfortunate events.“When I made ‘Rockers From The Land Of Reggae’ I was taking about 500 to Jamaica and I was told I had to have a license to go through the customs. I got fed up and I just leave the album with them. They wanted me to get a license and all them things, and I said ‘Why I want a license to bring my own thing to Jamaica?’. They said no, so I leave them at customs. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they sell them. And that was the end of it. I give the rest of them to Chin Randy’s in Jamaica Queens to distribute.”And so ‘Rockers From The Land Of Reggae’ soon vanished into obscurity. By 1983 Phillip Fullwood had settled permanently in the US and virtually retired from music. Over the years, partly fuelled by its extreme rarity, the album’s reputation has grown immensely, and original copies now command a very high price. Phillip is thrilled that this reissue will now expose it to a wider audience.“Life happen that way. I got kids and grandkids. I’m just a small guy who was with Spear and just tried to do my thing, like everybody else in the entertainment biz. My occupation, my passport you know says entertainer. Wishing a t’ing, yunno.”

Lee 'Scratch' Perry – Disco Devil Vol. 3 continues this archival run from Studio 16, collecting six extended mixes cut at the legendary Black Ark between 1977 and 1979. Drawing together key voices including Jolly Brothers, Max Romeo, Leroy Sibbles and Devon Irons, the set captures Perry’s studio at full tilt—stretching rhythms into hypnotic, echo-laden excursions. From the meditative pull of ‘Conscious Man’ to the driving force of ‘Dread Lion’, these versions foreground the interplay between vocal and dub, with Perry reshaping each track through space, repetition and raw analogue effects. Later edits of ‘Forward With The Orthodox’ and ‘When Jah Come’ round out the set, linking the original sessions to their continued legacy. A vital snapshot of Black Ark-era invention, where roots reggae meets dub at its most exploratory.