Various Artists - Hot Reggae

I picked this up for $5 in Brunswick. The opening track ''Reggae Fever'' by Curly David is superb, also the Otis Redding cover ''Dock Of The Bay'' by Club Safari. This compilation has later 80s hits mingled in with classic early Bob Marley, which comes across as a very eclectic compilation. There is no information about this release on the internet, and I am assuming it is Australian. It really makes one wonder if Bob Marley kept releasing music throughout the 80s if he had in fact survived. Would Marley have changed his sound like how Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff changed to suit the times that they were in, which were the rapidly expanding 80s era?

King Tubby And The Aggrovators - Shalom Dub

This album was purchased at PLAY Music & CDs in Melbourne on the weekend, after seeing it for a couple of years, with no one purchasing it. I had been eyeing it up from earlier visits to Melbourne. A bit of background on King Tubby, he studied electronics and built amplifiers in his spare time. He built his first Sound System in 1957. He was not actually a producer, but a sound engineer, and the story goes when he and producer Bunny Lee one night invented dub music, it was by mistake. They had forgotten to add vocals to a track, and they instead got an instrumental. Basically dub is instrumentals laden with effects. An effect machine used by Lee ''Scratch'' Perry was in fact the Roland RE-201 Space Echo, which consisted of echo (or delay as it is known these days) and reverb. The combination of reverb and delay on a track is what gives dub its experimental and unique sound.

The Uniques - Absolutely

I picked this up from PLAY Music & DVDs in Melbourne over the weekend. It is a pristine collection showcasing the vocal talent of this group. If I had to pinpoint a specific classic rocksteady sound, it was perfected on this release and the only album by another Jamaican vocal group The Kingstonians with their studio release Sufferer. The rocksteady sound could be described as having the basic drums, bass and guitar played on the offbeat with staccato guitar stabs and it is topped with piano or luscious organ that is bright and bouncy. Rocksteady musicians usually apply rhythm to the organ parts, and of course it is slower than ska. Ska and rocksteady artists usually dress very smart and of course it is before Rastafarianism so there is not a single dreadlock to be found.  

The Paragons - The Paragons And The Paragons Dubwise

This is a release from 1981, incorporating newer renditions of classic songs from the Paragons, identifiable because there is no famous violin line in their famous track ''The Tide Is High'', which was covered by Blondie. John Holt is a truly tremendous singer and songwriter whom I truly idolise greatly. I think some of the highlights on this album of well-known Paragons tracks and dub versions include ''Wear You To The Ball'' and its dub version ''Wear Out The Dub''. On this release there is a great blurring of the lines between rocksteady and dub, these two sub genres of reggae have often been overlooked because, the spaced out dub versions and effect laden sounds of dub really suit rocksteady's slow pace, thus it should be called ''dubsteady''.

Fat Freddy's Drop - Blackbird

These guys out of Aotearoa will be playing at the Odeon on the 20th of March in Hobart. They deliver the finest array of dub and reggae fusion in the Pacific. Highlights on this album include the mesmerising closer which seals the contents nicely, the track ''Bohannon'', which includes a massive amount of delay on the guitars. I am quite excited for these guys; finally I will be able to say I have witnessed a reggae act from Aotearoa. Where Katchafire have a lot of emphasis on the lyrics and singing, Fat Freddy's Drop can be quite experimental, emitting similar ragga sounds as another Kiwi act, The Black Seeds. On Blackbird, Fat Freddy's Drop delivers a clinical dose of dub.