SCIENTIST

Direct-To-Dub (Night Dreamer)

Night Dreamer, the Anglo-Dutch label behind six-track LP Direct-To-Dub by Jamaica’s Hopeton ‘Scientist’ Brown, operate a niche policy of releasing direct-to-disc records – no tape machine or digital editing software, what the musicians play is what you get. I don’t fully understand the virtue of this from an audio perspective if I’m being honest, but it does feel like a well-matched medium for the technical analogue magic of this giant of dub reggae production.

Recorded near Amsterdam with a band largely made up of serious London dub talent – such as bass/drums twosome Mafia & Fluxy and Creation Rebel guitarist Tony Phillips, all of a late-70s vintage as is Scientist – the results are an absolute dream sonically speaking, with sax and trombone rising into the sky and each snare hit somersaulting through space. Lead singer Donovan Kingjay has his buttery, soulful voice unadorned at times, treated to judicious echo-unit action at others, and is the perfect voice for a suite of classic-styled dub that would have ranked towards the top of the genre for any given year in the last half-century.

words NOEL GARDNER