Following similarly exhaustive efforts focused on African Head Charge and New Age Steppers, On-U Sound have now comprehensively complied the back catalogue of another of their core acts, namely Creation Rebel. The collection, called High Above Harlesden 1978-2023, brings together all of the band’s sought after LPs, bar one. Lows & Highs, from 1982, released just before their initial split, is unfortunately missing. The rights likely still owned by Cherry Red (1).

Dub From Creation / 1978

The Creation Rebel catalogue is a little tricky to navigate, since due to the fledgling label’s super tight budgets, founder Adrian Sherwood needed to squeeze as much as possible out of each studio session. As a consequence material for the first four albums was recorded at roughly the same time, and then later overdubbed, edited and mixed. For example, album #4 is really #2, cut in `78, but finished in 1980. That said, Dub From Creation, released in March `78, was definitely Sherwood’s debut production. Dennis Bovell was the engineer, and this was actually the very first time that the two legends met.

Plenty of ricochets rattle around. Delay doubles drums, fractures keys. Filters twist tones into weird alien whistles. There’s the odd funky feedback belch. Cartoon springs are struck and stretched. Dub Fusion is haunted by a horn, the spectre of a saxophone, but as far as lead instruments go, it’s Dr. Pablo’s melodica whose presence is felt most. The title track was lifted by Prince Far I for his Cry Tuff single, Frontline Speech. 

The Creation Rebel band was an evolving affair. The original line-up, something of a one off, included Eric “Fish” Clarke (brother of singer Johnny), Clinton Jack, Clifton “Bigga” Morrison, “Crucial” Tony Phillips, and Sherwood’s partner in On-U (at this point called Hit Run), Peter “Dr. Pablo” Stroud. Over the next few years personnel came and went. Desmond “Fatfingers” Coke, Charlie “Eskimo” Fox, Tony “Tsungirai” Henry (of Misty In Roots), Keith “Lizard” Logan, Veral “Ranking Magoo” Rose, and Lincoln Valentine “Style” Scott, were all either temporary or permanent fixtures.

Close Encounters Of The Third World / 1978

Close Encounters Of The Third World is split between songs and instrumentals, a sign that Creation Rebel were shifting from a studio project to a proper live, band, touring with and backing people like Prince Far I, Prince Hammer, Bim Sherman, and Jah Woosh. The instrumentals all feature combinations of Dr. Pablo’s melodica and “Deadly” Headley Bennett’s horn. Conspiring is a sweet lovers rock-like groove, and the set is a strong `70s roots reggae album. While several of the tracks are extended drops into disco mix dubwise, it is somewhat straight compared to what folks might expect from On-U now. Regardless, the cool, righteous Know Yourself is a knockout.

Rebel Vibrations 1979

A strictly dubwise offering, the sonics on Rebel Vibrations, compared to its predecessors, are much more stripped back. On tracks such as Diverse Doctor you can hear Sherwood start to master his use of separation and space. It’s on the title track though where the now characteristic On-U sound really begins to take shape. The production / mix far more out there than what came before. Drenched in delay, exploded by echo, reducing its details to shredded, spinning shrapnel. The bass pressure dialled up to the max.

Starship Africa / 1980

The original rhythms for Starship Africa were laid down in late 1978. However, they were left unused since Sherwood considered them “quite lame”. It was only when a friend, Chris Garland, was looking for music with which to launch his new label, 4D Rhythms, that the recordings were revisited. In a single overnight session Style Scott added new drums, while everyone present provided assorted percussion. The thing, though, that makes album stand apart from anything in the On-U or even reggae cannon is that the effects were overdubbed while the tape was run backwards. The results are totally unique. The process creates this sort of temporal tearing, as if the sounds are stretched to the point of breaking. Travelling to two directions at once, kind of gravity cancelling, with sequences simultaneously soaring and falling. The sonic subtraction seeming to reveal glimpses of ghosts caught in the machines. Ethereal entities hitherto trapped in a hidden dimension. Drops into delay repeat like locked grooves. Melodica melodies are muted, theremin thin.

Steve Barker raved about this record in The Wire, retrospectively when reviewing a CD reissue, describing it as the perfect soundtrack to William Gibson’s landmark cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer (2). A big fan of both On-U and Gibson, it became a holy grail for me. It took me years to find a vinyl copy, and I still remember my heart missing a beat as I slowly pulled its solar eclipse cover out of a rack in the Islington branch of Reckless. It was one of those double take moments when you honestly can’t believe your luck.

Psychotic Jonkanoo / 1981

The songs, sung by Crucial Tony and Lizard Logan, are back again on Psychotic Jonkanoo, an album that’s defined by its mix of wicked psychedelic wah-wah guitar licks and rattling Nyabinghi percussion. The Dope is a warning against the death sentence of hard drugs. Chatty Mouth is a crazy, catchy sing-along. Its version, Threat To Creation, lent its title to a New Age Steppers album, and its bass-line to their track, Chemical Specialist. John Lydon supplies backing vocals / shouts on Mother Don’t Cry. On Highest Degree, keys are run in reverse, creating an icy, sinister string effect. Its spooky dub is shot through with sharp shards of treated sounds.

The album takes its title from the Jonkanoo, an annual Jamaican celebration of dance and drumming. These are festivals that started in the 18th Century, when the island was still suffering under slavery and colonial rule. Centred around masked parades they combine ancestoral elements drawn from the Ga, Igbo, and Yoruba people. One the record’s standouts, an old Andrew Weatherall favourite, African Space, could indeed soundtrack carnival character Pitchy Patchy cracking his whip, or, likewise, a heavy, stoned Vodun ceremony.

Lows & Highs / 1982

While not included in the new package a shout has to go out to Highs & Lows, and especially the song Independent Man. This is an updated take on a Bob Andy-penned tune, recorded by Bob as both Chains and Set Me Free. A sufferers, now with lyrics about unemployment and recession, it’s a blues for Brixton’s Babylon. Shaped by Thatcher’s late `70s Britain, fuelled by injustice and anger, there’s a real prophetic sense of the inner city riots that were just a racist state shove away.

In many ways Prince Far I served as a mentor for Sherwood and Creation Rebel, and consequently, when the mighty MC was murdered in September 1983, the band drifted apart. The fall of The Voice Of Thunder changed everything. Sherwood, devastated, and afraid for the safety of his family, removed himself from reggae completely for a good while. He also, largely, stopped working with vocalists, pissed off with the politics, corruption, and demands for cash. Instead, he focused his studio work on projects such as Dub Syndicate and African Head Charge which, at least initially, were instrumental experiments, incorporating ideas and textures from industrial and ambient (3).

Hostile Environment / 2023

The surviving members of Creation Rebel – Magoo, Crucial Tony and Eskimo Fox – were reunited for a live gig in 2017. This then resulted in their first new album in forty-plus years. Hostile Environment, a shot straight to the Conservative Government’s head – and their crooked immigration policy – in my opinion is the most consistent brand new production that the re-energised On-U Sound has released. The highlights, perhaps predictably, are those that posthumously feature Far I. This Thinking Feeling and Swiftly, in particular, are standouts.

Notes

(1) Italian label, Lantern Rec. did do a quality reissue of Lows & Highs a couple of years back.

(2) Steve’s expert sleeves notes accompany several of these reissues. He also penned the band`s short biography on the On-U fan site Skysaw, which I have cribbed and fact checked from. 

(3) These strange soundscapes, and pioneering frontiers, gained Sherwood and On-U growing new audience, but they also, famously prompted renowned DJ David Rodigan to despairingly ask, “Adrian, what are you doing to reggae?”

Creation Rebel`s LPs have all received bespoke Bio-Vinyl reissues, and are also available as a crazy 6CD boxset – a primo package that also includes exclusives featuring Ranking Superstar, Jah Woosh, and Prince Far I. All can be ordered direct from On-U Sound.