keith hudson: flesh my my skin blood of my blood

ltd restock.  Originally released in 1974 on Mamba, Flesh Of My Skin Blood Of My Blood is the most hallowed of all those reggae albums which remain unavailable, and Keith Hudson's key achievement in a career launched when, as a fourteen-year-old, he recorded members of The Skatalites on his "Shades Of Hudson" rhythm. After a series of solid-gold productions for Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson, John Holt, U-Roy and the rest, this album projects Hudson's removal from Jamaica to London and New York studios and transatlantic audiences, and inaugurates a sequence of albums -- classics like Pick A Dub, Brand, Playing It Cool, Playing It Right -- which show his troubled experimentalism better suited to the LP than the cardinal 7" reggae format. Anchored here by Santa Davis and George Fullwood from the Soul Syndicate -- alongside musicians like Augustus Pablo, Count Ossie and Leroy Sibbles -- Hudson's mood is tormented and dazed, as on titles like "Darkest Night," "My Nocturne" and "Testing My Faith," where he struggles for Black senses of commitment --political, existential, religious -- at its breaking point. Magnificently and deadly serious, hauntingly unique, unmissable and unforgettable.