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***The source tapes for this CD were recorded in Jamaica by Jah Lloyd (aka Patrick Francis) as part of a series he made for Virgin Records' Front Line label. The original players of this music remain unidentified. Jah Lloyd used various combinations of musicians but did not include who played on which tracks. In the late '70s the original tapes were not released and were offered to The Flying Lizards' David Cunningham with the suggestion that he remix the music. Cunningham accepted the project, expecting lots of time in one of Virgin's studios to play with the music and the equipment, only to be presented with a mono master tape, which forced him to invent (or perhaps re-invent) techniques of editing, looping, filtering and subtraction to deal with unremixable mono material (these were the days before samplers). The techniques used here expanded his vocabulary of musical electronic (as opposed to electronic music) treatments and appear in a very different form on records made at that time (notably "Forth Wall," his collaboration with Patti Palladin, and production work on Michael Nyman's records). This very quirky, ambient dub record will remind listeners of some of Lee "Scratch" Perry's earlier albums (reggae / dub beats with samples and sounds buried deep in the mix), mixed with the low-tech tape butchery of Perry and Kingsley's early proto-sampling work. Fans simply expecting the early 'Lizards' sound minus vocals are probably going to be a bit disappointed, but only a bit. These instrumental songs have plenty to be amazed by buried in them: creaking hinges, bouncing ping pong balls, popping champagne corks, wounded trombones, shuffling papers and other odd sounds all unfolding themselves through the layers. It's difficult not to admire Cunningham's make-shift, use-the-tools-he-has attempts at sampling, and how successfully he has created a mellow, whimsical sound. Cunningham definitely has a style to his sampling, and the roots of that style are revealed here. |
