Paraphrasing the Soul Sonic Force and sorting through today`s releases for tunes that could have graced Alfredo Fiorito & Leo Mas’ Amnesia dance-floor…

Frankie B / Pressure Me / 333

Pressure Me is a seriously stripped back, super rare bit of `80s UK reggae. Straight outta South London – Balham and Clapham – circa 1985 / 86. Sweet & Bitter producing Franklyn “Frankie B” Bernard, originally for local outfit, Ital Stuff. With barely present, percolating percussion, Frankie’s vocal is cool and calming, but honestly the track’s all about the totally barmy digital B-line, which sounds like it was played live, ad libbed, not programmed, for the full 3, 4 minutes. Bouncing around, constantly changing. The subs discharged like some top secret sonic weapon. Random twisted tones ricocheting like gunshots. The version, Dub Pressure, uses only snatches of echoed Frankie, and reveals odd bubbling keys, as it’s sucked and spun through phasing effects. Reissued on a repro 12 by Death Is Not The End offshoot, 333, this the 8th essential release from the label in as many months. The young imprint has fast become, basically, “buy on sight”. 

Cousin / Fifth Wall / Well Street Records 

Jackson Fester assumes the alias Cousin for a quartet of dubstep and drum & bass-derived grooves on East London label, Well Street Records. All 4 tunes are nice – warm, rich, and deep – but the “ambient” title track, Fifth Wall, is the one for me. Sounding a lot like OK EG’s excellent E.P. from a few years back, it’s an Orb-like mix of dub and chilled-out electronics. A flickering, fluttering, float of fragmented frequencies. Full of soothing swells, and bumped by thumping, head-nodding bass. 

Hoodie X James K / Scorpio / AD 93 

I’m always on the look out for both leftfield dub bits, and strange shoegaze-y stuff, and blimey if Hoodie X James K’s Scorpio doesn’t fit both bills. Boasting a breakbeat, big, big bass-line, ethereal angelic vocals, and walls of treated guitar, its lush Cocteau Twins leanings whisper, wasted, like Massive Attack’s Mezzanine meets My Bloody Valentine’s instrumental experiments. Loved up, loved out, gossamer gothic. On the flip you’ll find Ether. I’m not sure if this is a remix, but it’s most definitely an Abul Mogard-like ambient moment. A sea of distressed, distorted shimmer and backwards echoes. A heavenly aural hallucination, where everyone hears what they want to hear, focusing on different details within the deep, dense mix. 

Low End Activist / Gossip Is The Devil’s Radio / ESP Institute 

Low End Activist describes his new E.P., Gossip Is The Devil’s Radio, as “Cold cuts of mutant grime and dubby UK rave pressure.” His chopped-up de / re-constructed rhythms constitute tribal techno griot grooves, and betray at least a passing interest in hip hop and dub. Shaken by seismic subs, everything echoed, disembodied divas sometimes deep down in there. Good Question is busted bogle – a bit like The Bug, but nowhere, nowhere near as distorted. Shuddering, scary with voodoo sound effects, machine screams and shouts. G.E.L., though, is the jewel. A rattling drum ritual set to an even slower tempo, like a Durian Brothers session at Dusseldorf’s Salon des Amateurs. Displaying dynamic stereo-panning, and ON-U levels of inventiveness, snippets of Jamaican are stirred in with the dread bottom-end boom. I think it’s the mighty Upsetter, Lee “Scratch” Perry, who’s sharing his wisdom on good over evil, and love. 

Pretty Sneaky / Private Stress

The Berlin-based artist, Pretty Sneaky, last seen on Honest Jon’s, shares 4 untitled tracks with Brussels-based imprint, Private Stress. It’s A2 and B2 that caught my ear, though I’m not 100% sure which is which. One is post-punk, sorta post-rock digidub. Kinda Colourbox, shy one horse, but also a little bit dub techno. Gently rumbling and growling, its flashes of delay and feedback are a nod to Basic Channel. The other is still skanking, but more stridently stepping, slow forceful funk. If you’re into Good Block’s brilliant Naiad, I would certainly have a listen. 

Rhythm & Sound / No Partial / PK 

The Aston”Family Man” Barrett-led Wailers Band released a Clive Chin-produced tune called Higher Field Marshall on the Jah Music imprint, in 1976. An early drum-machine-driven stripped back skank, It was flipped by a magical melodica cut, No Parshall. The London label, PK, reissued both of these tunes in 2001, together with a super sleek, deep, deep, deep Rhythm & Sound remake. This has recently received a repress. Supremely hypnotic, and soothing, a musical massage, it’s the dubwise equivalent of a dram of decent whiskey at the end of a very hard day. A moment for drinking, no more thinking. It doesn’t seem to do much, the changes are so subtle, but it could go on forever and you wouldn’t notice. Time stands still while it spins.