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I met the Chinese-Jamaican record producer Philip Stanford ‘Justin’ Yap in August 1991 in Queens, New York, where he was working, driving a taxi. In person Justin was a warm, friendly man who loved music and good Chinese food, and we spent a few days together talking about his music and his life in Kingston and the USA.
In the early 1960s Justin and his brother Ivan [aka ‘Jahu’] ran the Top Deck sound system from their family’s ice cream parlour and restaurant in Barbican, Kingston. The local success of the sound system encouraged them to venture into the recording business, and by 1962 Justin had recorded singers Larry Marshall, Ephraim ‘Joe’ Henry and Ferdie Nelson. The fledgling label recorded a couple of tunes with Larry Marshall and trumpeter Baba Brooks. “Distant Drums” by Brooks and the Trenton Spence Orchestra was a version of the old Cuban composition by Ernesto Lecuona, called “Jungle Drums” [originally “Canto Karabali”, recorded in 1928]. The label enjoyed a modest local Jamaican hit in 1963, when issued on Top Deck Records as the b-side to Larry Marshall’s hit “Too Young To Love”. As a fan of easy listening musician Martin Denny, Justin had heard “Jungle Drums” on Denny’s 1959 LP “Afro-Desia”. His liking for Martin Denny would prove fruitful later, when Justin recorded the Skatalites in a mammoth all-night session in 1964 at Clement Dodd’s Studio One on Brentford Road. The site had formerly been the location of a jazz club called ‘The End’.
By 1963-1964, hundreds of ska tracks were being recorded by Clement Dodd, Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid, Vincent Edwards, Vincent Chin, Leslie Kong and Prince Buster and others. Justin had linked up with Allen ‘Bim Bim’ Scott, a friend of Clement ‘Coxson’ Dodd, owner of the Studio One label who had already recorded the musicians who became the Skatalites. Through Scott, Justin met the Skatalites: “[Scott] started to say, well, you could get the Skatalites band, which was on fire at the time. Then he got me introduced to Roland, [Alphonso] Johnny Moore, the basic band at the time, Knibb and everybody. And then we hook up with Don Drummond too. I call him maestro. He takes over. He’s in charge. He knows what he’s doin’ – he’s very professional. And when you hear my recordings with Drummond, you know he’s in charge. I remember when I drove Bim downtown, we drove to his house. First of all, I didn’t go in – Bim went in and talked to him first. I remember he took off! Just went down the road and come back with his answer – it’s OK.”
Justin and brother Ivan organised the session in November 1964 at Studio One; it lasted 18 hours. Justin and Ivan had laid on food, drink and ganja: as Justin told me “This was a monster session and it turned out the greatest recording for me. One night session, one long jam session; it was like a party!” Justin was not only scrupulous about prompt payment for the musicians and singer Jackie Opel – he actually paid double the going rate.
The length of the session also allowed for alternate takes to be recorded, but the highlights of the sessions were the five original compositions by Don Drummond – “Marcus Junior”, “The Reburial”, “Confucious”, “Chinatown” and “Smiling”. The first two are in tribute to the Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey; “The Reburial” refers to the occasion of his interment in Jamaica in 1964, his remains having been brought from the cemetery in Kensal Green London, where he was originally buried in 1940, and reburied in King George VI Memorial Park Kingston [later renamed National Heroes Park].
Along with these originals were some well-chosen cover versions. Two came from the Duke Ellington book: “Ska-Ra-Van” is of course Duke Ellington and his trombonist Juan Tizol’s classic composition “Caravan”, while “Surftide Seven” is Ellington’s “In A Mellotone”. The LP title track “Ska-Boo-Da-Ba” is a version of Bill Doggett’s 1958 “King” US 45 “Boo-Da-Ba”. “Ringo” had also appeared on Arthur Lyman’s “Taboo” LP [1958] where it’s titled “Ringo Oiwake”. Originally it was sung by Hibari Misora – a very famous vocal song in Japan, recorded in 1952, the melody composed by Masao Yoneyama. Yet another tune copped from Lyman’s “Taboo” LP is “China Clipper”, composed by the pianist / arranger / orchestrator Paul Conrad, best known for his arrangements for 1950s English ballad singer David Whitfield. Incidentally, Conrad also recorded a classic easy listening set called “Exotic Paradise” in 1960, which fetches big money from collectors of that much-maligned ‘exotic’ genre.
The last track on this fine LP is “Lawless Street”, a feature for Roland Alphonso. Unlike the other Skatalites, Roland wasn’t a graduate of the celebrated Alpha School, like many of Jamaica’s top musicians from Bertie King to Yellowman. Alphonso was a graduate of Boys Town School in Denham Town. “Lawless Street” was another tune that was recorded twice at the session – the second version features vocal ‘peps’ and exhortations by DJ King Sporty.
The following year, the Skatalites again recorded for Justin at Clement Dodd’s Studio One and at the studio of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation [JBC]; from these sessions came tunes like “Red For Danger” and “Yogi Man”. Justin’s last session produced further brilliant cuts with Roland Alphonso – a superb version of jazz pianist Ray Bryant’s “Shake A Lady” and a hypnotically relentless version of Henry Mancini’s theme for the Peter Sellers film “A Shot in The Dark”. He also issued a great LP by the soulful Bajan singer Jackie Opel.
By late 1966, Justin emigrated to the USA, settling permanently in New York. There he took up US citizenship and was called up to serve in the US Army in Vietnam, In the early 1970s he worked in computers and eventually drove a New York cab. In his all too brief involvement in the competitive Jamaican music business he certainly left his mark as a producer. He produced some of the best ska ever made, and the LP reissued here is perhaps the most coherent LP in that genre, deriving as it does from a single session.
The celebrated record producer at Randy’s Studio, Clive Chin, who actually introduced me to Justin in the summer of 1991, had this to say to writer Heather Augustyn:
“It wasn’t the fact that they [the musicians] really love Justin; it was the fact that Justin used to pay them the right money and make them comfortable. Make sure them have them smoke, them food, them drink, and after them finish they got paid.” Unlike many other producers, Justin actually attended the sessions.
On a personal note, I was working in Spain during 1966- 1969 when the LP was released in the UK on Doctor Bird Records. What actually got me listening to the record again – in particular the Drummond compositions – was a concert I attended in late 1969 at the Lyceum in central London, performed by the jazz-rock band ‘East Of Eden’. During that concert they played an extended version of “Marcus Junior”. At first the rock treatment – led by electric violin and soprano sax – confused me. Then when that group issued a single with “Marcus Junior” as the b-side of their UK hit “Jig-A-Jig” on UK Deram, I bought that record, and there was the correct composer credit of ‘Drummond’ on the label. It sent me straight back to the original Doctor Bird LP.
In the late 1990s Justin was diagnosed with liver cancer, and although he’d returned to Jamaica, he travelled often to the US for treatment. During the time I spent with Justin, we had many conversations about music and life – as I noted earlier he was a warm and friendly guide to New York. Through Justin I got to know a great Chinese restaurant on the Bowery, where I had the best Chinese style spare ribs and cabbage I’ve ever tasted. I was also happy to find in Kingston the original tape of “Distant Drums” which I was able to return to Justin in early 1993. In conclusion I’m still grateful for everything he showed me – his kind personality, fascinating conversation and most of all, for the great music he produced. It stands as his defining legacy in Jamaican music history.
Steve Barrow / October 2023
WRWTFWW Records is overjoyed to present the first ever vinyl release for the outstanding soundtrack of 1999 Japanese action-political-thriller anime Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade by Hajime Mizoguchi. The epic full-lenght album is available as a limited-edition LP cut at Emil Berliner Studios and housed in a heavyweight 350gsm sleeve.
Legendary animation film Jin-Roh was penned by Palme d’Or and Leone d’Oro award winning filmmaker, television director and writer Mamoru Oshii whose filmography includes Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor 2: The Movie, and Angel’s Egg – critically acclaimed works praised worldwide, notably by luminaries such as James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and The Wachowskis. The film was directed by leading studio Production I.G. affiliate Hiroyuki Okiura (Record of the Lodoss War, A Letter to Momo…)
The film’s score, courtesy of famed anime and tv score composer, cellist and arranger Hajime Mizoguchi, evokes the dystopian world in which Jin-Roh takes place and captures the Little Red Riding Hood theme that carries the story – a dark, atmospheric, and immensely emotional soundscape that takes you on a grand and immersive journey and stays with you forever. It blends classical, orchestrated ambient, and poignant melodies carried by ominous strings.
This new project by WRWTFWW Records follows previous Japanese soundtracks from the catalogue: Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor 2, Evil Dead Trap, Violent Cop and precedes the upcoming release of Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi.
Refracted's "In Veil" materialises as the third emission in the Titrate series. A gradual unfolding across six passages, each step a study in the dissolution of boundaries.
Here, time becomes elastic - synthetic textures breathe alongside captured moments of reality, neither demanding prominence nor seeking refuge in the background. Percussion appears as memory rather than rhythm, while drones hover like fog over unknown lands.
Cut to 180g vinyl and embraced by 350gsm reverse board, "In Veil" doesn't announce its presence but rather seeps into awareness.
Musically, first of all, 1991's second album, "loveless," was more advanced and unexpected than anything else released at the time. Kevin Shields and band thoroughly pursued a sound based on pure sensuality, resulting in a work that overwhelmed the listener's senses. 1990's representative work was hailed as a perfect masterpiece that pushed the possibilities of studio recording to the limit, and has been featured on The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" and It has been hailed as a milestone on par with The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way," and Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions.
Japanese obi included.
Mastered from 1/2" analog tape using Studer A80 VU-PRE and Neumann VMS 80
180g vinyl weight
Standard gatefold outer sleeve
Six 300 x 300 mm art prints enclosed
Includes DL code (24-bit | 16-bit | mp3)
The culmination of Glenn Gould's interpretation of Bach.
Limited Edition] Analog / 90th anniversary of Glenn Gould's birth and 40th anniversary of his death Special Edition / Japan Original Edition
The debut album "Goldberg Variations" was released in January 1956 and made the young Glenn Gould's name famous all over the world. The last album released before his death, "Goldberg Variations," was released in September 1982, about a month before Gould's death. This work frames Gould's life like a closing circle, and is indispensable in considering his unique music. When we think of Gould, we think of Goldberg, and vice versa.
The fourth in a special series of six analog reissues of four different performances of that important work is a re-recording that was recorded over a period of ten days in April and May of 1981. The performance time is over 51 minutes, 13 minutes longer than the 1955 version, and the tempo continuity of each variation has been redefined, making this the ultimate performance in which every note has been thoroughly examined. 2000 DSD remastering is scheduled for cutting at Sony Music Nogizaka Studio in Japan. The gatefold jacket of the first U.S. release, IM 37779, is reproduced.
On August 5th 1962, after 300 years of British rule, which had soaked the earth of the island in blood, Jamaica was finally independent. The country that the British left behind was certainly a place of widespread poverty and deep inequality, but there seems to have been a real burst of confidence that came with independence.
Newsreels of the day show well-dressed crowds reacting with enthusiasm and excitement, and the era found its perfect soundtrack in the boldness and exuberance of ska music, which was erupting all over the island.
This optimistic mood found probably its greatest artistic expression in the music of the Skatalites, who formed in June 1964 as a kind of Jamaican supergroup. Philip “Justin” Yap was a young, upcoming producer who had used members of the Skatalites for his first tunes, recorded either at RJR (Radio Jamaica and Redifussion) or at Federal studios. As Steve Barrow documented in the sleevenotes for Pressure Sounds’ reissue of the classic “Ska-Boo-Da-Ba” album, Justin had also befriended Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, and when Coxsone opened his own Studio One facility in December 1963, Justin immediately switched most of his production work to this new recording room. Studio One opened just in time to catch the formation of the Skatalites, and is where Justin recorded most of his classic Skatalites sides.
He also recorded lots of excellent instrumentals with a smaller brass section, still mainly using members of the Skatalites, but crediting instead the composer or arranger of the tune. Combined with Coxsone’s own recordings, these productions for Justin’s Top Deck and Tuneico labels really captured the members of the Skatalites at their magnificent best, in the unique atmosphere of Studio One.
From 2006, I had the huge pleasure of getting to know the great Jamaican
innovator Hedley Jones, who told me how he had designed and installed the original Studio One recording studio, responsible for most of the recordings on
this disc: ‘In 1963 (Coxsone) Dodd contacted me. I was doing a lot of recording work with him as a guitarist in 1961, ‘62 and ‘63, and in 1963 Dodd contacted me with the idea of building a studio of his own. The only equipment he could find himself was a record cutting head that he got from a pawn shop in Miami, but it was a 60 cycle machine. He brought that to Jamaica, and an Ampex reel to reel one track recorder – they was the only things he could find. The rest of the stuff is history because I had to design all the amplifiers, design the studio layout and everything, with the help of two of my sons, who did quite a bit of the laying of
the conduits, while I designed the amplifiers.’ Hedley Jones was an amazing polymath, and one of Jamaica’s greatest inventors.
He designed and built one of the world’s first solid body electric guitars, one of the world’s first double necked guitars, and a new traffic light system for the city of Kingston, all based on the knowledge he gained during World War 2, as a radar operator with the RAF. He called himself “an experimenter”: ‘So I built that studio for him between August and December of 1963. I built the mixing board myself – well I had to – everything in Coxsone’s studio was custom built by me, anything that had to do with amplification. As a matter of fact, I had to design circuits that would quiet his cooling equipment, his air conditioning, it was too noisy. I had a board in there that automatically switched off the air conditioning as soon as the recording started. As soon as you turn on the warning
light, saying that you’re starting recording, the cooling equipment switch off automatically. And all that was my design.
‘It was open in December, I think the week before Christmas. And after having a successful opening – I put together a band to test it – and after the first successful test, then of course the rest is history. I think the board I built for Coxsone had 4 or 5 inputs for microphones, but it was still only a single channel (tape) recorder.
One input (on the board) was for the band, one for the singer, and there was a central microphone hanging from the ceiling… so at least four or five input channels that were available on the console. Anything that you can think of in a modern studio was there. We had reverb – I built that and I used a circuit and I used a mechanical unit, a spring reverb, and then we amplify that and fed it into the circuits. Tape echo came later. That spring reverb for Coxsone was the only one I (ever) built.
‘The last thing I had to do with launching that studio was helping in the recording of Bob Marley’s recording “It Hurts To Be Alone”, that was done on a Sunday morning in April of 64, and Ernie Ranglin was the guitarist, and he used my double-necked guitar, which was also a first in the world.’
Other than building the first incarnation of Studio One, probably Hedley’s greatest historical impact came from the design and build of the Jones Sound 100 Watt tube amplifier of 1947, which powered the first recognisable Jamaican sound system for Tommy Wong, aka Tom the Great Sebastian, with the same amplifier driving the first systems for Duke Reid the Trojan, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd and Roy Johnston’s “House of Joy”.
‘I build the first sound, but I didn’t call it ‘sound system’… it’s Tommy Wong who call it sound system, he gave it the name. It was 100 watts amplifier, and I build one for Duke Reid and one for Coxsone, and it was a basic design but with those tubes you couldn’t exceed 100 watts or you’d be running into trouble. ‘I wasn’t interested in copyright or money at the time. All I was interested in was the technology. I had these ideas in my head and on paper that I wanted put out as a practical design. So that’s where I started the ball rolling, it was in design.
Anyway, I left Kingston in 1965 because I found that I was working for nothing. I was doing all this and getting no rewards. And everybody was like “oh Mr Jones, could you just do this” or “just do that”, so I left Kingston in January 65 feeling quite dejected, I picked up all my things and came to Montego Bay.’
So Hedley Jones had an epiphany, and left the competitive bustle of Kingston for the relative peace of Montego Bay. Of course, he carried on experimenting, building great telescopes whilst working as a journalist, schoolteacher and guitarist, and as president of the Jamaica Federation of Musicians. When I got to know him, he was turning 90 and finally getting some recognition from the Jamaican establishment, receiving the Order of Distinction from the government, and some favourable profiles in the newspapers.
Through Hedley, I also got to talk to Keith ‘Sticky’ Parke, who engineered many classic recordings, first at RJR, and later at Coxsone’s new Studio One facility. With Justin Yapp supplying food, drink and ganja, and also paying everyone double, a convivial and exuberant atmosphere certainly comes through in the recordings, many of which were captured by Sticky Parke: ‘I worked for RJR from 1958 to 1966. At RJR we had a big concert studio, and people would hire the hall, like producers like Chin Randy’s, and I did a nice job for Chin Randy’s with “Rico’s Special”, I recorded that at RJR. I’d say I got involved with Dodd in 1959 or 1960. I think I might have been the first engineer to do any recordings there. Hedley Jones, he built the studio. I worked at Studio One from when it was built, and I recorded the Skatalites and Bob Marley, all the great names I recorded there. I was still at RJR but I used to go down there after work
or when I have spare time to fit in Coxsone’s studio. I worked there until ‘66.’ Sticky remembered the technical side of recording the Skatalites at Studio One: ‘We had, let me see, we had piano, drums, bass, one for the horns and two tenors (saxes), we had about five or six mics. For the drums we used a big RCA44 BX (microphone) or something like that, and we used Neumann mics also. We’re going back 50 odd years and you’re picking my brain! When we started at Coxsone, he only had an Ampex 350 and another Ampex, but they were all single (mono) track. Coxsone started with the one track machine, so if somebody in the band made an error we had to record it all over again, it was not like today where
you could dub that back in. What we used to do was Coxsone also had a sound system, about 3 sound system in Jamaica at the time, so what we’d do is we’d record and we’d have several reels of many, many records, and on Saturday afternoon we’d transfer the tapes onto acetate disc, what we called soft wax (or dubplate), and then he would send them out to different sound systems, and sell some of them.’
Sticky remembered supplying the Skatalites with American jazz albums for
inspiration: ‘Most of the tunes the Skatalites played, it’s not their original. Most of it came from (for instance) Herbie Hancock music which, working at the radio station, I would borrow the record, tape it and take the tape down there (to Studio One). There’s a chap, but now he’s dead, God bless him, but one of the finest musicians we ever produced named Jackie Mittoo, and I would marvel, cos while I would play the tape from the control room down to him, he would be writing out the music and playing along. And then when the Skatalites get together they would make their
own arrangement of it. Jackie Mittoo was a dear friend of mine, but then all of those musicians was my friends, you know.’ Sticky described the relaxed arrangements for payment: ‘Well I never charged Coxsone a dime, but I was well taken care of. Like we had no set fee, like 5 pound a session or something, but he was quite generous to me.
And I never charge him but he was quite generous to me, he provided all the alcohol for my wedding and also the champagne, and I never had to ask him, like I liked to play the horses and he’d always stand me a couple of pounds so I never could complain.’
This earliest incarnation of the Studio One setup would have been used on mostof the tracks on this ‘Ska Shots’ compilation, but it was significantly rebuilt in 1965, probably just after the Skatalites split up. Hedley’s mixing board was replaced, along with the one track Ampex recorders, swapped for two track machines which allowed the overdubbing of extra tracks, so a vocal could be recorded after the backing track. Unlike Sticky, Hedley Jones was not entirely happy with his payments from Coxsone:
‘I don’t know what happened to that console, because he changed it for a
commercial console about two years after, when he had made enough money that he could buy commercial stuff – he didn’t even finish paying me for the original console. He still owes me some money and so I hope that when we meet in hell, he’ll pay me then!’
I lost contact with Keith “Sticky” Parke, who was living in New York in the early 2000s, but Hedley Jones stayed in touch. He died aged 99, but, until he was overtaken with blindness, he would still email me regularly with questions about the latest recording software, and advice for what he called “good daddying”, on how I should bring up my children as a new father. Reading the words of both of them today brings back a key moment in Jamaican cultural history, when the birth of the Studio One recording studio coincided with the formation of the mighty Skatalites.
Diggory Kenrick
The only studio album by Madvillain (MF DOOM & Madlib) – widely regarded as one of the best hip-hop albums of all time.
“Inexhaustibly brilliant, with layer-upon-layer of carefully considered yet immediate hip- hop, forward-thinking but always close to its roots.” - Pitchfork
This new version includes upgraded packaging combined with audiophile sound quality for the ultimate listening experience.
Glenn Gould's great starting point is now available in Japan in analog form from monaural masters for the first time in 57 years.
Limited Edition] Analog / 180 gram weight vinyl version.
The debut album "Goldberg Variations" was released in January 1956 and made the young Glenn Gould's name known worldwide. The last album released before his death, "Goldberg Variations," was released in September 1982, about a month before Gould's death. This work frames Gould's life like a closing circle, and is indispensable in considering his unique music. When we think of Gould, we think of Goldberg, and vice versa.
The first of a special series of six analog reissues of four different performances of this important work is the debut recording, made over four days in June 1955. It is the most successful classical music album of all time and an icon in recording history. It was cut at Sony Music Nogizaka Studio in Japan, based on high-resolution recordings carefully transferred from the original monaural masters, which were never released out of the gate.
