Various - Pleasure Dub

Can’t take any more tuneless heavy dub? Then Pressure Sounds have the cure.

Pleasure Dub, as the title suggests, is a series of highly creative versions to elegant and feel-good Duke Reid produced rocksteady and early reggae A sides. These dubs were remixed in the mid 70s, after Reid’s death, by his nephew Errol Brown, who became head engineer at Treasure Isle once Jamaica’s first major female producer, Sonia Pottinger took charge. Prior to this release, the original Pleasure Dub has never been issued on cd.

The music itself was laid down by ex Skatalite saxophonist Tommy McCook and a changeable collective of players called The Supersonics. Old time tunes getting the echo treatment include Phylis Dillon’s Right Track, The Paragons’ The Tide Is High, and Dillon’s chunky underrated cut to Marlena Shaw’s Woman Of The Ghetto.

Additionally, Pressure Sounds have attached some bonus versions. These include two different mixes to John Holt’s ever popular hallucinatory tale Ali Baba, and a jolly organ workout atop Alton Ellis’ sprightly but hard hearted brush off Girl I’ve Got A Date.

Brown tended to favour reverb and delay over simply fading or muting the various elements. The result is an instrumentally busier, less subtle sound than that of the dubs created at Coxsone Dodd’s rival label Studio 1 (some listeners may find the incessant crashing snares a little OTT). McCook was a hornsman first and foremost, but his occasional flute playing is as distinctive an ingredient as Brown’s re-interpretive effects.

All in all, this is a good way into dub for people who don’t like it and a rare and vital link with its roots for those who do. A pleasure from start to finish.


Reviewed by Angus Taylor