Reviews

Apart from 2012's 'Shalom', 'Wisdom' is only the second long player in Dub Division's twenty-five year history.

As the title implies, with this 'Half Century Dub', Steve Vibronics and Dougie Wardrop (Counscious Sounds) are celebrating fifty years of dub history.

Feel free to consider La Reina Y La Real as the Cuban answer to female American hip-hop duo Salt-n-Peppa.

Recording back home in Kidal was and still is not an option, but for 'Elwan' ("the elephants") the members of Tinariwen remained a lot closer to home than for predecessor, 2014's 'Emmaar' (recorded at Rancha de la Luna in California's Joshua Tree National Park).

For their new long player, appearing on Francis Falceto's prestigious 'Ethiopiques', French Ethio-groove band Wubé Akalé (loosely translated "my sweetie" or "pretty woman"; a name the band took from a song by legendary Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya) joined forces with Ethiopian music legend Girma Bèyènè.

Those among you, who believe the Erdogan regime in Turkey really screens and censors everything, should urgently check out the oeuvre of BaBa ZuLa.

Musically speaking, Portuguese singer-songwriter and poet Lula Pena has always been an anachronism in the modern fado-scene, and personally she still prefers to describe herself as an existentialist musician.

The year has only just started and Pressure Sounds is already presenting what could easily become one of the most interesting compilations of 2017.

Dub Store Records ends the year in style with a reissue of 'ABC Rocksteady', a largely instrumental album from 1968, that saxophonist Ronald Alphonso recorded with Lynn Taitt (guitar) and Aubrey Adams (organ) for Sonia Pottinger.

Keith Hudson's 'Pick A Dub' is often referred to as one of the best dub albums of all time, but we'll leave that judgement over to you.