The Revolutionaries - Earthquake Dub (Earthquake - 1976)

Earthquake Dub was the first dub album produced by Ossie Hibbert and was released on his own label, Earthquake. The album was released as well on Joe Gibbs Record Globe imprint and on Count Shelley's label, Live & Love in the UK with all the tracks retitled. The Hot Pot Records reedition I post today follows the titles as used by Ossie Hibbert on the original release. As often with dub albums, Ossie used versions and recut of songs and riddims made for other artists. That's how he used the bassline to Keith & Tex's Stop That Train but with new horns arrangement. You can find pieces of classics sang by Dennis Brown, The Abbyssinians or Phyllis Dillon updated in rockers style by Ossie and The Revolutionaries. If you read the credits, you discover that The Revolutionaries were no half-weights but a who's who of Jamaican music: Sly Dunbar on drums, Bertram 'Ranchie' McClean on bass, Radford 'Duggie' Bryan and Earl 'Chinna' Smith on guitars, Ossie Hibbert himself and Ansel Collins on keyboards, Headley Bennett, Dean Fraser and Herman Marquis on alto sax, Tommy McCook on tenor sax and flute, Vin Gordon on trombone, Bobby Ellis on trumpet, Uziah 'Stick' Thompson and Noel 'Scully' Simms on percussion. The reissue of this masterpiece comes with eight bonus cuts.

Download => The Revolutionaries - Earthquake Dub

Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! - Seminar: Aesthetic Expressions Of Psychedelic Funk Music In India - 1970-1983 (World Psychedelic Funk Classics - 2010)

If I consider that already ten people have downloaded yesterday's post (Bollywood Funk Experience), Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! should interest at least the same people. Behind World Psychedelic Funk Classics you can find Egon and the Nown Again crew. So this time, expect an Indian psyche funk music compilation that lives up to its name, with effectively a lot of funk, hard breakbeats and psyche in it. But don't expect it to be the kind of underground compilation that digged ultimate Bollywood nuggets. As you can read in the nicely illustrated booklet, this compilation serves as an introduction to the genre and in fact plenty of titles have already been compilated elsewhere, especially if you possess already the two volumes of the Sitar Beat serie (I posted them both a while ago at the beginning of this blog thing) or the excellent mixes called Shitala. For those in the shadows of ignorance, Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! is the best way to grab a handful of Kalyanji Anandji or R.D. Burman titles. You can even find a title from Atomic Forest's Obsession '77, Mary Long, recently reedited by Now Again, and Kalus Doldinger's Sitar Beat. This last title has nothing Indian except its influences but is German.

Download => Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga!

Jonny Trunk & Joel Martin Present - Bollywood Funk Experience (Nascente - 2010)

You've got two parts in this compilation. The first part is a bit disapointing: the tracks selected are undoubtely Bollywood but there is not much funk in it. It's not that it is bad, it's just that I don't know much about this musical form and it sounds more like Indian restaurant muzak to my profane ears. Things start to get serious with the 9th track, a surf/funk piece fused by a wah-wah guitar called Pyar Chahiye Keh Paisa and due to Charanjit Singh. Then comes 4 tracks by Indian funk master RD Burman, an artist often compiled in the Western World: the instrumental Unknown Incidental Music,  the minimalit Dance Music, all tablas and saxophone, another track called Dance Music as well, clearly influenced by Italian soundtracks of the time, and Music, a song that cannot hide its psyche rock influences. Laxmikant Pyarelal spent some time listening Morricone sountracks as well before composing his own Theme Music. Anuradha Paudwal is the more original, mixing Bollywood voices with a dub rythm and electronica for Mainne Kaun Koi Kya Jane. If you must possess this compilation for only one reason, then it will be for Salma Agha minimalist space disco, Come Closer, a song that is so good and so catchy with its killing bassline and its psyche sitar licks that you listen to it again and again. If only all Bollywood were that good...

Download => Bollywood Funk