Various Artists – Trojan Presents Dub, 40 Deep And Heavy Hits – Trojan – SPECXX2072 - *****

Trojan's catalogue of reggae classics re-emerges in another series of compilations, now under the ‘Trojan Presents' banner. This re-packaging process has been ongoing for over a decade, but this latest petit dejeuner de dog is a doozy.

In the Seventies, Jamaican engineers with an instinctive understanding of sonic drama stripped existing recordings of distinguishing features, fore-grounding vocal snippets, booming bass and mystical melodica licks in echoing landscapes born in basically equipped studios and primitive effects.
They called it Dub, and here's forty chronologically sequenced tracks, from King Tubby to relative unknowns, to convince you it's a genre of genius.

(17/7/11)