Those of you with an interest in things Rastafarian (and if not, why not?) should give thanks and praise to music polymath Andy Beta over at Moistworks and download the 13 tracks he has put up under the clever if not particularly relevant in an Australian context title "Trust-A-Farian". [Editor's Note: a couple of the tracks don't download as right-clicks but if you just click on the link to either of those tracks you will be taken to a veritable treasure trove of past and present Moistworks hits du jour, including the offending tracks. Of course, the problem may have been fixed by now.]
What you get is a singularly fantastic and well-thought-out set of reggae tunes, gravitating, necessarily, towards the 1970s end of the spectrum, and the bass-heavy end at that, but with the odd foray into more recent variations on the theme (not my own cup of tea, but also not in any way detracting from the flow). Some listeners will know Linval Thompson's ode to the medical benefits of inhaling (which appears on Don Letts' trawl through the vaults "The Mighty Trojan Sound") but one listener at least had never heard the version by Ranking Dread. He also throws in a dub of Dennis Brown's "Man Next Door", which also appears on "The Mighty Trojan Sound" but might be more recognisable to technogoths as performed by Massive Attack (and sung by Horace Andy) on "Mezzanine". I am particularly intrigued by Ranking Dread's "Bom Dub", which features a solid metallic guitar sound that may be viewed as the precursor of Konono No 1. The whole thing ends by dragging you so far down into the echo chamber that you may not emerge with your mental health intact. The perfect soundtrack for the depths of a long hot summer (or, for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, a long cold winter).
