ras michael & the sons of negus: promised land sounds

Dug Out present Ras Michael's Promised Land Sounds, originally released in 1980. This is the untrammeled counterpart to Dadawah, six years later in 1980, fresh from the Black Ark: free, rawly spiritual trance-music; a full-force nyabinghi freak-out. The drummers are headlong and rollicking, thunderous and explosive. Even more so than Dadawah, the mix is ecstatically echoey - giddily dub-wise without let-up. Ras Michael himself sings from the mountain-top, like he just don't care - at the top of his lungs, in voices, screeching like a bird - with the delirious abandonment otherwise owned in reggae by Lee Perry. Amongst the uncredited performances swirled into proceedings, there are squiggles of flute straight from the Upsetters song-book, the minor-key organ stabs and abstraction of electric space-jazz and sax-playing more attuned to the Headhunters than the Blazing Horns (1977) ("I Ya I" in particular is a stunning fifteen minutes.) This is the real thing, music without affectation - Pure reggae. Sun Ra fans should love it; anyone with ears to hear. Prepared and manufactured at Abbey Road, D&M and Pallas. Beautifully presented in rigid, old-school, tip-on sleeves, with matte-coated fronts and untreated-paper backs; 180 gram vinyl. These sounds are sounds of inspiration and love and culture to the universal benefit of mankind. So therefore meditate and stop hate.