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Sunday 31 May 2020

And We Ain't Got No Water


From 1977, a piece of Lee 'Scratch' Perry reggae so hot it could burn the vinyl it was pressed onto. Soul Fire clocks in slowly and then things fall into some kind of groove. A grunt, a hiss of steam, an organ groove and Lee's vocals, a rasping, edge of your seat kind of singing 'soul fiyah/ an' we ain't got no water'.  There's some 'la la la la la'. The horns come in low. This is so loose sounding but so on it and precise and the mix is superb, achieved using just a four track recording desk, some rum and collie weed (as SRC said a few weeks ago), the needles close to the red and the myriad of background noises that make something beautiful and righteous out of what could be chaos.

Soul Fire

3 comments:

Jake Sniper said...

Hard to choose a favourite Lee Perry track,but this is definitely up there.

Swiss Adam said...

Yep, if I drew up a top 10 this would definitely be in it.

The Swede said...

Masterpiece.