Aswad – New Chapter/A New Chapter Of Dub
I got the dub version of this album for my 13th birthday so it must have been about 1983 and then I got the vocal album, so I’ve put them both in here because they’re both really important to me. For the same birthday I got a Walkman and I recorded the dub version of the album onto a cassette and I can remember walking round my neighbourhood – Hyde Park in Leeds – listening to the album on headphones, which was a totally new experience back then. Aswad were an incredible band – anybody who saw them live back in the day will know this. You can find the early remnants of drum and bass there. Obviously it’s not double speed, but the rhythms, the melodies, they’re all there. There’s the foundations for a lot of black British music in there. They’re one of the leading reggae artists in Britain. They’d been going for about 15 years before they had a No 1 which is quite an achievement. I didn’t really like what they did at the back end of their career, but after going all that time and then getting a no. 1 record – it’s pretty amazing for the time.