More Pressure

And straight to the head. This one slipped right under my radar but its a wonderful new release on Pressure Sounds that has now stacked up half a century of high quality reggae re-issues. Back in 1992 when I heard of the first serious reggae re-issue programme on Blood and Fire Records it all made sense. Steve Barrow, one of the founders of Blood and Fire said at the time that his mission was to give reggae the type of re-issue attention Jazz had been receiving since the mid eighties. So far both labels have fared well with slightly different release agendas. In addition there are a number of newer reggae reissue labels such as Auralux, Motion and Patate amongst others. And of course bludgeoning us with their oversupply is the re-invigourated Trojan Records.

Back to the music on this particular CD. Its a compilation of obscure singles and versions put together with the love and devotion of a fanatic...just up my alley. Since I wasn't there at the time the relative scarcity of the tracks doesn't mean that much to me. The absolute killer track for me is Ricky Storm's The Way It is. Other favourites are Skyjack Version from Bongo Gene All Stars, Folk Song by Uhuru and the instrumental All for Free from Tafari Syndicate. Along with the CD and Vinyl issues are two 7" singles with exclusive b-sides.

For my money this is roots music of the highest quality. Hopefully we won't need to wait another 12 years and 49 CDs until Volume 2 in the series. Buy with confidence.