PLAYLIST 2026 - No 20 - Edge of Saturday Night by The Blessed Madonna & Kyle Minogue

Edge of Saturday Night by The Blessed Madonna & Kylie Minogue

Well, it seems The Blessed Madonna can call upon some pretty big names to bring their talents to the service of her dancefloor. Here it's Kylie,who is no stranger to this sort of electro woofer busting disco banger. Here she is slumming it with this very noticeably mock sleazy looking gay crowd, whilst Kylie is trying to look a bit more bedraggled, wrecked and edgy than is usual in her own videos. 

Goodness knows what this song is about, making everyday a Saturday and getting plastered perhaps.  I mean this woman is 58 and can't possibly do late night clubbing anymore, she needs her beauty sleep. Otherwise liposuction and the porcelain doll like tragedy of Madonna's pension years beckons. This has some very uplifting beats, providing a more than pleasing way to spend three minutes and thirty one seconds with this enduring legend.

PLAYLIST 2026 - No 19 - Mercy by The Blessed Madonna Ft Jacob Lusk

Mercy - The Blessed Madonna Ft Jaccob Lusk

In the seemingly long hiatus between the Gabriel's first album and its follow up, Jacob Lusk has been appearing to find time to do quite a bit of feature vocalist spots, mainly with Moby, but also here with the DJ The Blessed Madonna. This is a disco music at its most classic, and Lusk's voice gives it all the diva gloss you could hope for. I mean, if you had the opportunity to have that voice 'do your little ole song' you'd grab it with both hands wouldn't you. And The Blessed Madonna does not fail to fully embellish it with glitter..

PLAYLIST 2026 - No 18 - Crisps by Getdown Services

Crisps by Getdown Services

This track from their first album Crisps, is still on my morning shower playlist. Getdown Services music, is hewn with authenticity, which largely comes from Josh Law, the main songwriter and production ideas man. Though the ethos of this junk food obsessed band, is a collective one, shared between Law and his best mate Ben Sadler. As friends from childhood, there is sense for the in joke, boyish foolishness and what larks they get up to, about them still, even though they in their thirties. They don't remotely mind they're overweight and will happily perform with their shirts off. Crisps, is one of those songs that you can't quite pin down what it's about, there is a certain scattergun quality in its lyrical direction and wit, but the well turned phrase is one of their distinguishing qualities - 

It's a good job it's not a competition mate, or I swear you'd fuckin lose it - I'm having a party and your not invited, I'm building a castle and your not getting in, it's Mott and Bailey - Your not the enemy, your somewhere in-between a childhood dream and a pyramid scheme - I'm thick as shit, I'm not, but I look it, I got apps, I got a phone and I know how to use it, I got audio books.

They musically draw from quite a wide pool of styles, anything 80's or 90's rock or electro. There are times when the elliptical nature of their lyrics and delivery evokes the stridency of Mark E Smith & The Fall.  Law, increasingly has this air of world weary pathos about him, and looks like he's been on one too many benders lately, whilst Ben Sadler appears to just love the larking about. Considering the gig schedule they keep up it's no wonder they've got bags under the eyes and look tired.

PLAYLIST 2026 - No17 - Tone by Arto Lyndsay

Tone by Arto Lindsay

This summer it has definitely been the season for Arto Lyndsay. Exploring the 'bossa nova period' in his back catalogue has been quite a constant.  And with every week the algorithm on You Tube throws me some new musical morsels to try and chew on and ravenously gorge. Hence how I hit upon this sparky gem called Tone, from his 1999 album Prize. The parameters stay pretty much the same, his quiet almost whispered top vocals, effortless laid back and cool, with an unruffable ease, tripping over it's deceptively simple, yet artfully, constructed gently Latin rhythm. Tone has moments of when the soft soothness of this, dramatically breaks away from lilting, into a harder edged flat drum sound, half high hat, half phased, accompanied by the fluttering twitter of a synth drone.  I just find this totally addictive. And currently it's the source for making everything all right in the world.

2026 PLAYLIST No 16 - Alviverde by Jun Miyake & Arto Lindsay

Alviverde by Jun Miyake & Arto Lindsay

If you have seen the film Pina about the work of the choreographer and performer Pina Bauch, you will instantly be familiar with this tune. I , however, re-encountered it recently through my rooting about in Arto Lindsay's back catalogue, and You tube's algorithm did the rest. It is such an addictive tune, underpinned by that spritely double bass riff and the scattering percussive rhythm that dances around it propelling the music onwards. Over the top of this Arto Lindsay does his usual laid back oh so effortlessly cool singing. It is currently on repeat play on my daily music list. 

2026 PLAYLIST No 15 - Simply Are by Arto Lindsay

Simply Are - Arto Lindsay

Currently excitedly rattling through the back catalogue of Arto Lindsay's music. I first encountered Lindsay in his 1980's New York No Wave phase as the extremely freeform noise guitarist in DNA and Lounge Lizards. That sophisticated type of angular noise and art jazz that Lounge Lizards personified, has since led him to bossa nova and samba rhythms and a style of gently expressive jazz singing remeniscent of 1960's Brazil. Born and brought up in Brazil, Lindsay does have an instinctive feel for the form, which enables him to push the musical envelope a bit further than you might expect, And what's more make it work. Music reviewers struggle to place him, so basically compose a list of rag bag terms some of which might fit -art pop , bossa nova, tropicalia, jazz pop, experimental rock. Undoubtedly he brings all his art rock noise baggage with him, so it takes a few delightfully surprising turns. There is a sonic adventurousness here, unique to this style of easy on the ear Latin inflected jazz. And I am becoming quite deeply obsessed with it. Simply Are, is probably the most accessible song from this period of Arto Lindsay, taken from his third solo album Noon Chill released in 1997. I love his style of smoothly dead pan low key singing, it is so laid back and chilled.

2026 PLAYLIST - No 14 - Cursive by Mandy, Indiana

Cursive - Mandy,Indiana

Based in Manchester or Berlin, Mandy,Indiana have this stance that they appear to be coming from another world entirely. Their music is pretty uncatagorisable. There is definitely a debt of inheritance from the whole Manchester scenes of old. I'd say post punk more generally, in its melding of different genres into a cohesive whole. A commitment to pushing at boundaries that reminded me of early Faust, and it is that seventies German experimental rock/electro/Stockhausen/improv vibe I largely settle on. This performance of Cursive on Later...with Jools Holland, has the customary vocals in French from Valentine Caulfield. Not speaking French, I can't tell you what she's singing about, a lot of it sounds as if it might be nonsense lists of associative word play. But it moves along a great propulsive groove. That breaks at the end into guitar playing that sounds like he's scratching nails down a sheet if metal. Very Test Department like. I think I love them.

2026 PLAYLIST No 13 - You You You by Arab Strap

You You You - Arab Strap

Just when you think Arab Strap's career Renaissance might have peaked, up turns this new track. An album Half Told Tales is to follow on 4th September. So we will have a while yet to bask in the glow of this caustic little gem. The music rumbles along in the background in a deceptive electro disco until a menacing guitar like a travelling express train breaks the dissociated cool with unsettling ease, then a descending trills of notes, and ends with a series of monumental crangs. Meanwhile Aidan Moffat intones his mordant word smithery, bemoaning the hole in his shoe, but as the song progresses grumbles increasingly about his state of bodily deterioration in explicit detail. Until he lets his rage off the leash, it's not just at what he's become, but what the world has become, with protesters being treated as terrorists, the false faith in AI as the saviour of no one. And as part of a music business now completely beholden to the internet, how can any of us escape becoming hypocritical simply by association? So this is punchy stuff. Not afraid to broach some of the controversies and conundrums of our age. It's utterly brilliant.

I've got a hole in my shoe that lets in rain

And another new lump in another vein

I've got pills for breakfast every day

To keep my pains and fears at bay

I've got a portly paunch I just can't shift

I feel undesired, dismissed, adrift

My get-up-and-go is long gone

And the days keep dragging on.

I've got a hole in my head that can’t be filled

Time is never spent, it's only killed

I'm always bored, it seems nothing excites me

My own limbic system fights me

I've got watchlists I'll never watch

And pruritus scroti in my crotch

I've got a seething sadness in my soul

That might just swallow me whole

As the tyrannised unite and fight

There’s a fiery frog in my throat now

From all that singing: Bella ciao!

I've got my day in court that can't be missed

'Cause the government claims I'm a terrorist;

I fear for my son, I fear for my daughter

But in this world of slaughter

And if you're streaming this song on Spotify

Then we both fund weapons-grade AI

But if it wasn't here, then how would you hear it?

We're over a barrel, but we don't have to cheer it

I don't know what the fuck to do

When hypocrisy reigns and nothing is true

And nobody pays for abhorrent behaviour

Fuck these demagogues cosplaying saviours

Lyrics Arab Strap 2026

2026 PLAYLIST No 12 - Go Fuck Yourself by Fat Dog

Fat Dog - Go Fuck Yourself

One of my favourite tracks of last year was Fat Dog's, All The Same. With no signs yet of a new album, Go Fuck Yourself is a stand alone single, for now at least. The album Woof was a bit of a patchy affair. But Go Fuck Yourself with it's Euro disco backing track is a delight. No way a track with that title is ever going to get the airplay it deserves, but it is really a beauty. One gets the impression Joe Love the lead singer could be a bit of a miserable git, his songs do seem to have a studied hostility and stroppy indifference at the core of them. Not a hint of humour or self deprecation. Fat Dog appear to have a high turn over of band members, losing bassists and drummers with some frequency. The rock- klezmer- techno of the first album, has morphed now into something which remains addictive, but has perhaps less original things to say musically. Love also appears, like Getdown Services,to be not afraid of flaunting his Lad Bod.

2026 PLAYLIST No 11 - Radiator by Getdown Services

Getdown Services - Radiator

This duo from Minehead, have been ploughing a very particular furrow for a few years now. The rapport between them is similar to a comedy double act. They've been friends since childhood, and there is a mutual affinity and love here for making affectionately barbed music together. With this song Radiator, and a storming appearance on Later with Jools Holland, I think they are about to step up another notch in their visibility and popularity. 

Getdown Services, aka Ben and Josh, are authentically who they are, nothing about them feels manufactured, squeaky or clean. These are Lad Bods, with spare tires and a bouncy over intoxicated energy.  Radiator is an idiosyncratic song about being caught in a cramped room where you can't turn down the radiator. Their songs are often about such small insignificant details of ordinary life and the culture that surrounds them.  The lyrics are witty, acutely observed, pointedly satirical and frequently profane. Meanwhile the dance groove of Radiator infectiously grinds on with great gusto, and finishes with Josh playing a truly demonic cacophony on his guitar. This was the moment I fell in love with these guys. 

Though they have echoes of the langerous and laconic qualities of John Cooper Clarke and Alex Turner, they are very much their own thing. It could be easy to dismiss them as a novelty act, but that would be doing them a real disservice.  Don't take their lack of seriousness for shallowness, there is a lot of depth here if you look for it. What they are producing is enjoyable music, that possesses a great life affirming verve, which also keeps a keen eye on what can be lovingly lampooned. They are also clever wordsmiths to boot. Currently my band of the moment.

2026 PLAYLIST No 10 - Focu 'Ranni by Rosalia

Rosalia is currently touring the world with her performance of LUX. To coincide with this, three tracks previously only available on the CD/Vinyl version have been added to the digitally available download. LUX - The Complete Album, is of course purely a marketing device. But putting that to one side, the three tracks Focu 'Ranni, Jeane, and Novia Robot are welcome additions. 

Rosalia - Focu 'Ranni

I can see why they might not make the grade for the first edition of the album. There are similar themes, some are great, some not quite great enough. After all LUX is a long album already, stuffed with 15 tracks clocking in at nearly 50 minutes. Could it bare three more tracks, making it over an hour in length, without overstaying it's welcome?  However. I have become rather obsessed with the track Focu 'Ranni, it's just such a beautiful melodic ride she takes you on, into which the startling exultation of a choir of treated vocals give you this unexpectedly invigorating chorus. 

Rosalia's voice is her weapon, that she pierces your heart with. It's such a joy to hear it being employed with all the soft delicacy and subtle nuance she is capable of, on Focu 'Ranni. I've had moments of being enraptured by it, her voice erupts from such depths of feeling into expressiveness. Focus Rani appears to concern the all consuming fire of love, and this can be interpreted either as a terrestrial or a spiritual love affair, which she's debating whether to entirely surrender herself to it. Continuing the religiously inflected intensity that runs through out LUX. It's a marvel.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

LISTENING TO - Getting Killed by Geese

The production on Getting Killed is one major factor in this albums apparent cohesiveness. It has, overall, a rather clean sounding acoustic, as though this were recorded live to give it a punch, with little further unnecessary embellishment required. It's shorn of showy bombast or overly studio based effects, everything originates with the dynamics of a tight band of folk playing together. So whenever it does get raucously worked up, as it does on the album opener Trinidad, or later in Bow Down, the acoustic cacophony and mess is all the more to be relished. As though this trickster demon has taken over the band and is set on causing destructive mayhem. But all this is a carefully created acoustic deception, put down on this recording. They sound like this small local indie band, that's putting in its application early to make stadium grade.

Cobra - Geese

Camaron Winter's vocals are noticeably never allowed to be subsumed under anything that is going on around them. Because so much of the feverish energy present erupts from out of his larynx. There are many touchstones stylistically that are referenced here. Winter's vocal style here at times is reminiscent of Rufus Wainwright or the Violent Femmes. Lyrically he has moments when he conjures with the spirit of unease present in early Nick Cave,  bellowing about 'there's a bomb in my car' on Trinidad or in the phrasing and emphasis of 'bow down down down to Maria's dead bones' on Bow Down. 

Half Real - Geese

It is one of the minor miracles of this album that even when the sound touches on such influences or established styles like blues for instance, it uses them simply as jumping off points to transcend or abruptly take them somewhere totally unexpected and original. There is frequently something delightfully fiddly and percussive going on, flamenco hand claps or a guitar loosely jangling like a bell, that gives the sound an improvisatory, yet still with a propulsive edge.

Bow Down - Geese

Getting Killed is not a sound nor an album that reveals all its treasures in one listen. My appreciation for how good this album could be, has only grown with each repeated listen. Because you do have to give yourself time just to tune in to the vibe of where it's coming from. But once reached, there is much to be gorged upon.

Long Island City Here I Come - Geese

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

2026 PLAYLIST No 9 - Trinidad by Geese

Geese - Trinidad

The opening track of Geese's Getting Killed, Trinidad, is a barbed wire infested cacophony that is up their with the early work of The Birthday Party for something scary heading your way. It starts off innocent enough with a gently voiced blues fired admission that ' I try ', sung repeatedly, but then the car crash begins. Cranging guitars angle grind through some metal, and Cameron Winter starts loudly declamining like someone demented that 'There's a bomb in my car'.Yeah, this is not your average bit of easy on the ear indie, this has nerves of steel, and the brawn of devils. As he admits to murdering his family and then driving away. I love this, mostly because they dared to open their album with this, which makes the rest of it seem a beautiful stroll in a park, by comparison.

2026 PLAYLIST No 8 - Au Pays Du Cocaine by Geese

Geese - Au Pais du Cocaine

Geese appear to have landed in the catagory of becoming the much lauded saviours of guitar based music - 2026 edition. Which is probably the sort of albatross most bands would not want strung around their neck. That they have achieved a level of success without fully capitulating to the mainstream music industry, is a tiny bit miraculous. However, with the album Getting Killed they have broken big, because this album is really just too damned good. It's their fourth, and judging by a cursory check through of their back catalogue, it is indeed a seismic shift in their overall sound and originality. What first caught my attention was this -Au Pais du Cocaine. It's a plaintive song, goodness knows what it's about. Drug or love addiction take your pick. Cameron Winter's flexes his vocals,  channeling a Rufus Wainwright vibe, which gives any song it graces a quality of world weary languor. But whatever this song is, it's compulsive listening. Can't quite get to through day without a touch of it.

2026 PLAYLIST No 7 - Sherpa by Angine de Poitrine

Sherpa - Angine de Poitrine 

Now at first glance you might be thinking, what's with the gimmicky black and white dotted costumes, makeup, the golden triangle insignia etc. This all feels rather too contrived, its weirdness feels arch, a novelty, a bit of Dadaist theatre, does it not? This is the experimental rock duo Canadian group Angine de Poitrine, formed six years ago. Their nom de plumes are - Klek the drummer and Khn the micro tonal guitar and bass player. They recently released their second album, but have suddenly become something of an internet sensation. Like progressive rock in the seventies, or Avant guarde jazz, the guitar prowess with its mathematics and microtonal execution, brings out the inner nerd in a lot of chaps. 

Their music is built out of repetition, of layering guitar lines over one another, sometimes shifting delightfully into atonality, the microtones etc, that suddenly erupt into a straight slab of rock or jazz riffery.  Occasionally there's a sonically altered vocal like a Star Wars alien. There music has an insane driven quality. When they hit their full stride they are an irresistible force. As I watch them I think - would this feel any different if they weren't dressed in so avant guarde a fashion? And the answer is yes, but the music they produce would remain interesting. You might start to take this far too seriously. The presentation may feel deceptively a daft parody, but it is consistently in a dialogue with the music. Weirdness meeting weirdness. It is complimentary.

I think its best to conceive of the costumes as all part and parcel of an elaborate performance art piece, and the music as radically anti any convention or musical genre you might want to bag them in.  Sherpa, with it's Arabic tinged chord sequence is about as strikingly original as they come. It is quintessentially them. Angine de Poitrine, in case you were wondering, is French for Angina Pectoris. Chest pain in other words. Whether they will surpass this brief moment of internet fame, and have legs longer term, who can say? Will these masks eventually have to come off?

LISTENING TO - Trying Times by James Blake

James Blake's seventh album, marks a significant shift on many levels for him. Two years ago he took a major gamble, left his record label, dropped his agent, and launched himself as an independent artist with his own label. On a practical level he was taking full charge of the direction of his career and how its marketed. Enjoying having a much more direct connection with his fan base. He distrusted the widely used streaming model of record companies, that wasn't demonstrably lucrative for the artist, nor an effective way of promoting and selling your work, as it has often being made out to be. So, the last two years since Playing Robots Into Heaven have proved to be a steep learning curve. But out the other end of all this comes Trying Times, which is probably James Blake's most musically and thematically coherent album, he has made so far.

Trying Times, is on the surface a simple sequence of love songs, often distant and imaginary, fracturing or malformed by modern troubles in maintaining any sort of loving relationship. But, like the song The Death of Love, it is also a comment on this particular moment in our culture, where our tech mediated lives are funneled into increasingly divisive and hate filled dead ends. Where we find tolerating differences, any lack of convention, or merely an alternative opinion, increasingly tricky territory. 

The soundscape on Trying Times is recognisably James Blake's, but it is more organically sparse and sparing in its arrangements, with the keyboard and Blake's voice often clearly placed right up front and unfiltered, than previously. He is less inclined to throw everything bar the kitchen sink at a track, and if all else fails drown it in echo, of voice modulation. Quite often, he starts from a melodic line borrowed from another person's music, whether it's a choral line from Cohen or a 50's doo wop, it sets the scene for the song that is to follow. The idyllic opening of I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, demonstrates the fantasy world that this lilting waltz time song exists within. 

The album opens with Walk Out Music, with a vocal exchange between two voices chiming in with 'Your no good, to anyone...anyone...to anyone....dead, dead, dead ' Blake uses this device of two voices intertwining and sharing a sentence to manifest an internalised dialogue. Which here drops in other words as reminders, that also there's 'trust' and 'opportunity' present as you walk out into a new world. It's an immaculately simple song about reticence and embracing whatever is currently present. And in the songs which follow :- The Death of Love - I had a dream she took my hand  and Trying Times, we find him laying out some of the best songs of the album.

The song Trying Times is undoubtedly the pivotal heart of this album, arriving with 'You know I'm shredded by the time I'm home' and how though ' I'm an eyesore, your a sight for sore eyes'. How our close relationships with others constantly saves us from being swallowed up by our self preoccupations. Our lack of external loves and friendships being a danger to us all. The video has Blake sat beneath a triangle of spinning plates, that one after another fall down during the song. A cogent metaphor for modern life requiring us to do so many things at once, we cannot help but feel we fail to attend properly to all aspects of our life. 

Blake's career has been fortunate in that he has become the much sought after producer and collaborator with a wide range of top level artists, from Rosalia and Beyonce, to here on the track Doesn't Just Happen, with the distinctive authorial tones of Dave - 'If being a man was easy I'd still be me cah I do shit the hard way'  he declares. That he understands 'I know you want to make it to heaven, but it doesn't just happen'. There is a very catchy walking keyboard refrain that ambles cyclically across the background throughout this track, concerning the day to day travails of a man just trying to do good, in the face of adverse conditions. It's one of the many highlights of the album. Others well worth catching, are - The Rest of Your Life  - Through The High Wire. The album winds up with Just A Little Higher. Which concludes the album with one of its most telling lines of lyric- 'Adjust your sights, Cos they're playing us, From a great height'

Like many of Blake's albums, Trying Times has a longish running time of forty seven minutes. Whilst he does alway give you value for money, I do think a judicious cut of a couple of tracks might have been of benefit to the impact of the album, as a whole. A problem when you are your own boss is, who tells you when further editing is required? There is a danger that you are too close to the thing you are creating, and understandably love, to stand back far enough to perceive what it really needs.  

That said, I'd say Trying Times does sustain its length better than some of his previous albums. You are carried along by the all enveloping soundscape he has placed the songs within. There are no overly dramatic lurches away from its languid and often rhapsodic orchestrations. These minor reservations aside, Trying Times gets a big thumbs up from me, I absolutely love it.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

2026 PLAYLIST - No 6 - I Had A Dream She Took My Hand by James Blake

James Blake - I had a dream she took my hand

The second track to be released from James Blake's upcoming album Trying Times, I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, is on the surface, one ravishingly simple song. With its fifties doo wop style backing singers shimmying deeply within the mix. It is, nonetheless, infused with Blake's characteristic plaintive vocals, and fish tank orchestrations. This has the feel of something that is both contemporary and the evocation of some dreamy nostalgia that exists only in the post modern imagination. Following on after The Death of Love, this bodes well for the album, that he himself is already trumpeting as his best.  

I Had A Dream She took My Hand, takes place in this imaginative fantasy of a love affair that may or may not yet be happening in reality.  But given it's literal musical echoes of both past and present swirling around in its pool of yearning, this song luxuriates entirely in its internalised state of cultivated intoxication, which visualises a love requited. In the hands of a less sensitive artist, it might these days appear unconsciously creepy. But Blake's pure vocal lines maintain a healthy line of dreamy innocence, of an uncomplicated love seeking a hand to hold. 

2026 PLAYLIST - Beam Down by Scientist (1981)

This is such a fine piece of Dub, from its 80's golden era. I've been rather addictively playing it all week. Taken from the album Meets The Space Invaders, Beam Down opens the proceedings. Scientist was a true innovator in a very crowded field of Dubsters, in that he was prepared to go that little bit further than everyone else would. On Bean Down, it has this ambling almost gently walking rhythm over which the hardest most explosive dub is being executed. At points you are just hearing the dub, the tune has gone, completely buried under the riotous cacophony. Almost pure noise for noises sake, avant garde dub of a peerless variety. In amongst my more contemporary pieces, this three minutes plus stands the test of time. Dub is ageless.

SIX OF THE BEST - Sly Dunbar

I was greatly saddened to hear of the death of Sly Dunbar at the age of 73. He may not ever have been that widely known, but his contribution to the development of reggae music over his lifetime, was literally immense. There was certainly a time in the 70's & 80's when Sly Dunbar seemed to be playing drums on everything coming out of Jamaica, Together with Robbie Shakespeare he formed the rhythm section and production duo, Sly & Robbie, who eventually became the most sought after producers outside of the reggae fraternity.

1971 - Dave & Ansell Collins - Double Barrel

Sly Dunbar began playing drums at the age of fifteen, in his first band the Yardbrooms. His first recorded appearance is on a single from 1971 with Dave & Ansell Collin's Double Barrel, a No 1 single I bought and played endlessly on my tiny record deck. I am the magnificent W Oh Oh Oh Oh. Reggae that reached the UK charts in the seventies always had an air of the novelty to it. Rarely reflecting the much harder and less musically cosy aspects of what was going on in the underground scene. This managed for the first time to reflect a bit of both.

1976 - Junior Murvin - Police & Thieves

Originally written as a comment on gang warfare and police brutality in Jamaica, Police & Thieves by Junior Murvin was produced by Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Sly provides a subtle yet distinctive lilt in the background. This became the ubiquitous underground reggae hit of the early 80's in the UK.  It's subject matter of police oppression, found it's own relevance in the UK when the Notting Hill Carnival produced days of street riots as tensions between police and the Black Carribbean community erupted into violence.Here it also features that new thing, the 12' extended version, which gave space for dub breaks. Police & Thieves musical lightness of touch, belies it's subsequent anthemic cultural impact, representing an aspect of the black experience in the UK and wider world.

1976 - The Revolutionaries - Kunte Kinte Dub Parts 1 - 4

Sly Dunbar was an integral part of the musical  collective that was The Revolutionaries, formed in 1975. Playing with them until the early 80's. He was very much the most sought after drum for hire, always bringing something new to the sound studio. He also contributed to work by The Upsetters, Lee Perry, The Aggrovators and Bob Marley.  Kunte Kinte Dub,is probably the most famous piece of dub, that became 'The' track to play and produce dub versions of through house sound systems. Drawing as it did on themes from the TV phenomenon of the Roots drama series, it fed into the growing mythology and Rastafarian presence in black urban culture at the time. This track also slipped 'rockers'  into the musical mid-stream between roots and reggae. This was and remains sublime stuff.

1981 - Grace Jones - Pull Up To The Bumper 

Sly first met Robbie Shakespeare in 1972,  they were both in high demand so worked together frequently. They worked so well as creative musicians they began collaborating as a production duo, and we're often recruited to take an artists recorded output to another level. They worked with Grace Jones on three albums from her peak imperious period, but Nightclubbing is probably by far their most successful collaboration with her, or with anyone for that matter. This success only led to further work outside the reggae niche with Joe Cocker, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Herbie Hancock, to name drop a few. Here is the 12' version.

1985 - Sly & Robbie - Make Em Move

Throughout all their years of working together Sly and Robbie's own albums were still where they pushed the musical boundaries of reggae the most. 1985 they signed to Island who wanted to give them more mainstream  exposure. I'm not sure whether Language Barrier was quite what they had in mind. It's certainly accessible, it's a complex, almost bewildering fusion of so many musical styles and sources. It has a distinctive hard explosive gun like drum sound, and a very eccentric, if not wayward, adventurous musical spirit. I've always loved this album, even though, if you are not in the mood for it , this can be a bit like being bludgeoned repeatedly over the head with an inflatable dildo. Just lay back and enjoy all eight minutes of this platter.

1987 - Sly & Robbie - Boop ( Here To Go ) feat Shinehead.

Two years later, they produced this little gem of a top ten hit taken from the Rhythm Killers album. Again criss crossing all sorts of genres with consummate ease, this took them a long long way from 'rockers' blending in aspects of contemporary urban street. Sly and Robbie always kept a close ear to what was developing, and adeptly include aspects of what was then a new 'toaster' on the scene. 

And all these are just a little toe dip into the vast recorded archive of what Sly Dunbar was involved in and achieved during his lifetime. He was a truly unique creative force, that revolutionised reggae rhythms, not just once, but constantly.

2026 PLAYLIST - No 5 - God, Protect Me From My Enemies by SAULT

 

Every now and then, and usually unannounced, SAULT releases a new album. Initially the albums were numbered, these appear to have have gone beyond needing curating their sequence. Unless that lit match is meant to be a 1. You do sort of know what to expect with SAULT, some beautifully arranged soul, that reflect and reinvigorate the past and current music of the black experience in some way. Their producer/ svengali/ facilitator -Info, has found himself in some deep shit a lately over the non-repayment of a huge loan from Little Simz. Good as this track is, it does feel a little low key and safe. Even the title could be interpreted as defensive.

Here after a few albums that digressed from the successful SAULT formula so far, they return to it, but in a slightly more sparsely and less lush manner. God. Protect Me From My Enemies, is a slick sinuous song, sung by Cleo Sol so keen heartedly, and succeeds in gently ingraining itself in your psyche. I've heard other tracks from the album, and this appears by far the best. From an admittedly cursory listen the rest lack the zesty fire and exuberant excitement of some of its predecessors, but this one gem is welcome none the less.