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(Click on the picture to download.)
Here's another one for today: a short (at 37 minutes), but sweet collection of prime Upsetter goodness from the seventies. Pretty obscure it is too, I'd imagine, at least I've never heard of the Seven Leaves label before or since, and there's hardly any reasonably useful information about this comp on the net. Anyway, here are nine tracks, six by the Upsetters or Lee Perry solo, the others produced by his wackiness at the Black Ark studio. Here's a tracklist and a short comment by Mick Sleeper, the world's foremost authority in Upsetterology. If you like the classic Lee Perry sound (and/or some mighty fine rootical sounds), you're gonna love this one too.
(Click on the picture to download.)
What can I say about this record that hasn't been said a hundred times? Well, for starters, that this first edition of Timeless is a very different record from the regular, trimmed-down version. Paranoid, tension-filled darkside tunes like This Is A Bad and Jah The Seventh Seal make it a much edgier and more multi-facetted affair. Goldie didn't call Timeless "inner city ghetto blues for the 21st century" for nothing. But to really feel like a sweeping panorama of life in the more run-down and dangerous parts of London the record needs the epic sprawl across two discs. Only at this length the right balance between a vicious sense of menace, violent rage, lyrical soulfulness and moments of beauty and introspection can be created.
Timeless is not without its flaws and some of the criticism often levelled at it cannot be completely denied. Arguably, it's sometimes a bit too pretentious for its own good, with some of the tracks a tad over-long, and the more soulful/jazzy tunes at times veering a bit too close towards slick eighties-fusion. But Timeless is an album designed to be taken in as a whole rather than as individual tracks and as such it is still pretty impressive. I actually think that in the album's overall context the more conventionally "musical" tunes work pretty well for the most part, with only the r&b-ish Still Life really falling flat.
Also, this record contains some of the most intricate and lethal breakbeat cut-ups ever created: swirling and swarming, fading in and out of the mix, they create an almost nauseating sense of disorientation. And for this astonishing level of rhythm science alone Timeless is well worth listening to.
