Systemwide
Pure And Applied
BSI
For those of you who don’t know what dub is or thought it had died into downtempo, you need to really check out BSI Records – and you’d be doing yourself a huge disservice by not looking into this album. Systemwide is a pure shot of adrenaline into the jugular of reggae/dub, injecting the music with a punkish hip-hop vibe while still giving much respect to the genre. While definitely planted before the feet of the masters like Tubby and Augustus, they keep wandering through the territories of d&b, R&B, hip-hop, and other dance forms.
For the Rude Boy vibe, you’ve got Mondell’s crawling bass on songs like “Réclame.” And for the G-Ride set, y’all can get your head nod on with “Carlos’ Jammy.” On the opening cut, “Ey=B8psultan,” Josh Skins attacks the drums like it’s personal, raging Mike Tyson jab after George Foreman hook on his one-drop. Skins has every song assault you like a .45 slug, giving you a very live (as opposed to studio) feel. You’re splashed by the man’s sweat on “Snipers.” Dr. Israel reemerges (no, seriously, where has he been?) to bless two tracks (“Crisis Time” and “People of the Book”) on this superior disc. It’s actually really sad having to move on to review other discs, because I know that Pure And Applied is one of the best discs I’m going to hear this year.
BSI Records: http://www.bsi-records.com
