King Tubby's Special 1973 - 1976

There seem to be hundreds of compilations out there claiming to be the work of King Tubby and all of varying quality.This one issued by Trojan not long after his death in 1989 must rank as one of the must haves. The first thirteen tracks comprises an album Tubby mixed for Niney Holmes with The Observers rhythm section ,don't know which album as the otherwise excellent sleeve notes by Steve Barrow don't say. The remaining tracks is a compilation of mixes Tubby provided for Bunny Lee with The Aggrovators . Contains a lot of mixes to familiar rhythms to some such as " Ali Baba" , "Skylarking " and "Queen Of The Minstrels" . Listen out for snatches of vocals in places from the likes of Horace Andy,U. Roy ,Dennis Brown and Delroy Wilson . This whole set would make an ideal introduction to old school dub , and once your hooked there is no going back as you may also find yourself on a never ending quest for the perfect dub album . I never seem to come across any bad ones especially those with production dating to the 70's and have avoided most digital productions so far.Has been issued on CD but this is a quality vinyl rip . Here .

Space - KLF & The Orb

Quite rare Jimmy Cauty (of the KLF) solo project released under the alias of Space , originally intended as The Orb's debut album .After Jimmy Cauty left the original line up of The Orb to concentrate on the KLF he took the tapes with him and removed all of Dr. Alex Patterson's contributions and released it on the KLF communications label .This makes a great companion piece to The Orb's proper debut "Adventures Beyond The Ultra World" taking the listener on a journey through space from blast off to splash down via a quick trip through the solar system from Mercury to Pluto and all planets in between with the aid of synthesizers , samples , classical music , space coms , and a creepy take on "Twinkle , Twinkle , Little Star". Early ambient house classic much darker than the KLF's earlier groundbreaking "Chill Out" album ( if anyone wants this do the comment thing) and described by Jimmy Cauty as " a record for 14 year old space cadets to go and take acid to for the first time" . If your older than 14 and have no acid at hand , a dark room and a bottle of red may get you slightly off the launch pad or just as a good bit of classic ambient to chill to, either way this is still a 38 minute trip worth taking . The limited CD issue was split into tracks indicating the planets visited on the journey track it down if you can. This is a good ol' vinyl rip consisting of two tracks , Space 1 and Space 2 . Here.

Hardcore Holocaust - The Peel Sessions

Here's one to blow the old cobwebs away or listen to first thing in the morning instead of sipping your favourite branded caffeine stimulant to get your day started .Twenty five tracks recorded for John Peel over twenty years ago that still seem as startling now as they did all those many moons ago . John Peel seemed to love dropping a bit of hardcore in to his show , god knows what the indie kids of the time made of this coming up after the The Pastels .A few of the sessions from The Stupids ,Doctor And The Crippens and Electro Hippies are closer to US hardcore/skate type punk, the rest from the likes of Extreme Noise Terror and Napalm Death (probably two of the greatest names for groups ever IMHO ) are full throttle 1000mph riffing drumming and sometime twin vocals although probably closer to Tibetan throat singing recorded in the depths of hell than conventional vocal duties . I believe da kids of today now refer to this as grindcore . For best effect go straight to Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror and take in small doses ,most tracks are around the 1 minute mark apart from Bolt Thrower's epic "Attack In The Aftermath at 3.29.

Tracks:
Heard It All Before, Dog Log - The Stupids
Sheep, Chickens, Mother - Electro Hippies
False Profit/Another Nail in the Coffin/Carry on Screaming/Conned Through Life - Extreme Noise Terror
Attack in the Aftermath/Psychological Warfare - Bolt Thrower
Skate Bored/Intense Degree/Day Dreams/Bursting - Intense Degree
Voice Your Opinion - Unseen Terror
Moral Crusade/M.A.D./Divine Death/Control - Napalm Death
Pink Machine Gun/Garden Centre Murders/Skin Tight - Doctor & The Crippens
Exploitation/No Religion - Doom

For some songs concerning war,skateboards,religion,vegetarianism ,dogshit,death and more death come here .

Burning Ambitions : A History Of Punk

This was a recent eBay "win", as the eBay money making machine likes to inform you on their emails. Remember seeing this back in the day but being only twelve years of age and not having the sort of cash to buy a double album for about a tenner I just had to content myself with staring at the Sgt Pepper spoof/homage cover instead and long for my own copy of this one stop shop punk rock comp minus Pistols,Clash,Banshees,Jam and a few other notable omissions. Despite these absences this is still a killer compilation with hardly a duff track which covers 1976 to 1982. Currently grooving to The Exploited's evergreen classic "Dead Cities" and Anti-Pasti's "No Goverment".

Tracklisting:
Boredom - Buzzcocks
Bingo Master's Breakout - The Fall
1, 2, X U - Wire
Life - ATV
Keys To Your Heart - 101'ers
I'm Alive - 999
Gary Gilmore's Eyes - Adverts
Justifiable Homicide - Dave Goodman and Friends
Where Have All The Boot Boys Gone? - Slaughter and the Dogs
(Get a) Grip On (Yourself) - The Stranglers
Your Generation - Generation X
Baby Baby - The Vibrators
Identity - X-Ray Spex
Read About Seymour - Swell Maps
I'm Stranded - The Saints
Chinese Rocks - Heartbreakers
Lock It Up - Eater
Ain't Got A Clue - Lurkers
Lady - Adam and The Ants
Love Song - The Damned
Looking After No. 1 - Boomtown Rats
Where's Captain Kirk? - Spizzenergi
In A Rut - The Ruts
Angels With Dirty Faces - Sham 69
Stranglehold - UK Subs
Flares and Slippers - Cockney Rejects
The Wait - Killing Joke
No Government - Anti-Pasti
Holiday In Cambodia - Dead Kennedy's
Dead Cities - The Exploited
Last Rockers - Vice Squad
Harry May - The Business
Police Story - The Partisans
Someone's Gonna Die - Blitz
City Baby Attacked By Rats - GBH
Complete Disorder - Disorder
Russians In The DHSS - Attila The Stockbroker
Lust For Glory - Angelic Upstarts

Not too bad vinyl rip here...

...and The Exploited introduced by David "Kid" Jensen on Top Of The Pops in 1981

Hawkwind Warrior On The Edge Of Time

Hawkwind seem like Britain's harder edged version of the Grateful Dead who still attract a loyal following to this day of travellers,hippies,punks,freaks,heads,ravers,metalheads or just about anyone atrracted to a bit of good old psychedelic space rock . My favourite Hawkwind album , a near classic in my opinion and strangely never been given the big remastered treatment as have their other albums from the 70s' .Only had a brief CD release in the late 90s' which now seem to go for silly money . A great review on Julian Cope's site Head Heritage gives a much better view on this album than I ever can ....

"This album was Hawkwind’s most polished at the time, and one that would signal the abrupt end of the group’s tenure on UA, which was a pity. But this sixth and final album (discounting the contract-fulfilling, cross-faded “Roadhawks” compilation) was where Hawkwind’s initial burst of space-metal punk blur-outs joined at the hips with druggie busking would be in full force for the final time as pan-galactic mystery tunes are interspersed between nocturnal instrumental bridges. Lead guitarist Dave Brock was on a total songwriting high as “Warrior” held three of his stupendous psychedelic traumas in the shape of both sides’ respective openers: “Assault And Battery”/“Golden Void” on side one and “Magnu” on side two.

Hawkwind’s personnel lineup had always differed wildly from album to album, and “Warrior On The Edge Of Time” was no exception. ‘Speculative fiction’ author Michael Moorcock was brought in to fulfill a less-crazier Robert Calvert spoken word role, and was an excellent choice as it was he who previously collaborated with the band with his written piece “Sonic Attack.” A second drummer, ex-Chicken Shack skinsman Alan Powell was added on drums alongside Simon King, while keyboardist Simon House had already been integrating more keyboards (and occasional treated violin runs) than ever before into Hawkwind for the past year, evolving their sound into one verging on precision. And an equally precise Lemmy Thunderbird bass line opens “Assault And Battery” over mellotron washes followed up by the double drumming kick in and the ever-changeless, over amplified Dave Brock power strum as his vocals proceed to rip off Longfellow with the nonetheless great line “Lives of great men are reminders/We may make our lives sublime…” over Nik Turner’s weaving flute melodies. But the whole thing is a gigantic WALL of sound that pushes further and further on into time, only breaking for the chorus where it remain a wall, but only a slightly higher one for Brock’s just lurched into another chord. It runs immediately into the Bardo-weaving “The Golden Void” as the mellotron curtain is parted with what initially sounds for all the world a piercing mid-seventies Moog oscillation when in fact it is Simon House’s screeching violin through multiple phase and delay units. The churning musical mess has still lingered from “Assault And Battery” but slowed down into a trudging out-of-bodiness as Brock intones a reappearing “corridor of flame” as all backing instrumentation melts into the background with super-slowed tempo that is steady and altogether tripped out. Then the great build towards the finish with even more unleashed Brock power-strums through the biggest psychedelic amp he still owned and Nik Turner enters the fray in the coda with a “feel” solo on sax that absolutely surpasses his own complete lack of expertise with a beautifully-parped passage evocative of the journey to come: which does soon enough with the first of three spoken links.

“The Wizard Blew His Horn” is all echoed vocals with synthesizer and drums resigned to essentially what amounts to haunted house effects in the background. The phased and bashed cymbals carry over his cries for “a champion… CHAMPION… CHAMPION…” crossfading just before Hammer Horror time into “Opa Loka” -- an instrumental whose title is taken, perplexingly enough, from a town in Florida (albeit misspelled) and not some mythical planet that ties in with the vague Moorcock conceptual story line. But something else it most definitely is, is a totally NEU!-driven instrumental with linear pacing and a feel like a more spaced-out and organic relation of “E-Musik.” And it continues with all the directness of NEU! as a veritable gallery of synthesizer soundscapes pass overhead. “The Demented Man” ends side one, a lugubrious Brock acoustic and drum-less ballad as seagulls wheel and cry and mellotrons reinforce the whole “We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago” 12-string styled rumination.

Brock’s other side is reflected in side two’s kick off, “Magnu.” Rain and wind beat against the Hawklords as that Brock riff from not only side one but EVERY previous Hawkwind album continues on over a lesser-NEU! groove that opens up a path for synthesizer and then violin outlays with a loosely squonked sax rhythm. But the tracks begins to spiral slowly out of control and into a tornado funnel as the brutal repetition trance out of the groove continues for so long that the vocals begin to draw into a black hole of backwards echo, turning the chorus into a into a mesmerising trance that gently begins to bend pitch, speed and shape the further the track proceeds forward. The chorus is great: although it’s completely indecipherable even before its metamorphosis into the phased, phased guitar overdubs and unrelenting skittering, echoed violin vamping through far too many effects extends into the next dimension. The crossfading continues into the Nik Turner echoed-vox a lot intonation of “Standing At The Edge,” which goes into the Simon House instrumental “Spiral Galaxy 28948” (the numeral date being House’s birthday) like a Moog passage meeting the Allman Brothers in a cosmic roller-rink. This then blurs out to “Warriors,” the last spoken piece heavy on dramatic tympani and distorted vocals pronouncements from Moorcock. “Dying Seas” is an equilibrium-threatening track that opens with Lemmy’s solo sludge-funking bass that pound through Nik Turner’s phased, echoed vocals as the two drummers crash out a beat too simple for one drummer, but it only adds to the disorientation of it all. And Turner proceeds to throw another free-sax freak out at the fade. “Kings Of Speed” hurries up the end of the album with opening bass/drums/guitar walloping and a totally uncalled for synthesizer WHOOOOOOSH that signals a return to their previous quick-paced songs, this time with near-Johnny Thundering plectrum exercises and Simon House hoedowning for all it’s worth in the middle bridge. Brock’s vocals return, now echoing backwards. It’s a mindless street anthem/football chant mess and an all-too-well-earned self-coronation of amphetamine abuse.

Sadly, this selfsame substance would lead to a Canadian bust that saw Lemmy sacked and Hawkwind immediately reduced to sub-cosmic debris. Try as one may, the following two albums for Charisma -- even with the inclusion of Paul Rudolph on able-bodied bass -- pale greatly besides their six years of recording for United Artists. But beyond this?

Four words: ‘Proceed with extreme caution.’

The Sethman 2000

Wiki here for more info . WOTEOT here.

Lee Scratch Perry Battle Of Armagideon

After Mikey Dread's World War 3 on previous post the the apocalyptic reggae theme continues with one of Lee Perry's most successful 80s' releases . Eleven tracks from inside the mind of Lee Perry concerning politics,ganja,sex,religion and himself amongst many other things . Don't often listen to this as Perry's Black Ark magic always seem to draw me in more but have played this quite a bit recently and find this album stands up well next to it .Great cover with ganja smoking skeleton (Colly Jesus Christ )who seems to be proclaiming judgement on the USA and the Soviet Union (This was the 80s'), Thatcher ,The Queen,one of her corgis or maybe the entire human race . The back cover has a picture of Perry wearing a gas fireplace as a hat .This album preceded two more superb albums Lee Perry recorded with Dub Syndicate , Time Boom X De Devil Dead and From The Secret Laboratory both well worth tracking down . Vinyl rip here .

The Meteors Live

Legendary psychobilly album,well at least in these parts, released in 1985 of The Meteors recorded live in Glasgow for a local radio show although I'm not sure if all of it or a heavily edited version was broadcast as P Paul Fenech is at his sarky and arrogant best ,who's between song banter is worth the price of admission alone . An absolutely storming live album nearly all performed at breakneck speed with a couple of slowies to get your breath back .Highlights for me are "Lonesome Train","Ain't Gonna Bring Me Down","I Don't Worry About It" and "These Boots Are Made For Walking" but it's all really worth a listen in one go for the full effect.Will post more psychobilly posts again soon.For now ,as Mr. Fenech says "Swing it Ginger".