Dub Syndicate - Ital Breakfast

Ital Breakfast is Dub Syndicate at their most relaxed and most lethal, a 1996 On-U Sound record finally back in print where it belongs.

The band was always a two-city operation. Style Scott, one of the great reggae drummers, cut the rhythms in Jamaica with players drawn from the Roots Radics, Soul Syndicate, Joe Gibbs' Professionals, and Bunny Lee's Aggrovators, a roll call that reads like a history of the form. Then the tapes travelled to London, where Adrian Sherwood did what Sherwood does, pulling them apart and putting them back together with overdubs from Skip McDonald and Akabu until the whole thing breathed differently. That transatlantic method is why On-U records never sound like anyone else's dub.

The title track opens with I Roy dropping in for a cameo over a rhythm loose enough to trip over. The Corporation stretches past five minutes on a bassline that keeps sinking lower, Throw Down Your Gun carries its message without preaching, and The Captain's Trance Mission closes the record with Lee Scratch Perry doing exactly what you'd hope, entirely unbothered by anyone else's plans.

Nine tracks, no hurry anywhere in them. Dub records this generous with space are rarer than the genre's reputation suggests.