DregsInTheCrowd

The Abbey Road of abject misery.

It's not the BEST dub LP ever made. But most sources seem to agree that it's the FIRST dub LP, which is more than enough to make it historically significant. Dubs were a thing for a couple years already, typically issued as b-sides, or simply played by DJs on acetate dub plates at sound system events. But the dub LP as a thing was almost certainly ushered in by Aquarius Dub.

The album itself is a product of dub's earliest era, when the idiom was less codified. A lot of early ... read more

There aren't a lot of perfect albums in this world, the ones that can play flawlessly for basically everybody, across decades and generations. But Heart Of The Congos is perfect. And I'm not a purist about one mix or the other - one is extended and more detailed, so you can get a closer look at the sheer weirdness of the musical layers; the other is hazy like a dense cloud of pot smoke, an equally flattering brand of weirdness. But central to both are Cedric and Roy's sublime ... read more

Fire & Blood's mission to rescue obscure, even unheard 70s dubs and turn them into focused, topical compilations was one of the more intrepid feats of 20th century musicology, and produced some of the finest dub LPs ever released. And their incredible archival efforts are slowly going to waste as many of their seminal 90s compilations have never been reissued or made available to stream. Case in point, Freedom Sounds In Dub, a collection of b-sides and unreleased dubs of deeply ... read more