Tapes Meets The Drums Of Wareika Hill Sounds – ‘Datura Mystic’ 12″ [Honest Jon’s]

Big collaboration here between the master of digidub Tapes and Wareika Hill Sounds, the Jamaican musicians who really impressed with the No More War 10″ on Honest Jon’s last year. Pulling down on some proper soul-touching dub vibes, we’ve got the spiritual A-side versioned with echoing drums one the flip, actually one of the best dubs we’ve heard of modern time.

London-based Tapes is Jackson Bailey, perhaps most commonly associated (and perhaps incorrectly) with the Jahtari label, and one of the best digidub sounds around. Raw, digital, dub…there’s no better three words for the man’s productions currently sitting in our crates. And that’s why we like him.

So this record was buy-on-sight, without any previews until it was home and on the deck. Totally caught off-guard and blown away by how good this record is. Not at all being familiar with the original ‘Datura’ from Wareika Hill Sounds possibly made this even better, and stretched our belief of just how good Tapes is as an all-round producer.

‘Datura Mystic’ is a spiritual rasta-vibe journey, with emotive hand drums at funeral march pace guided by a gentle kung-fu flute (the name just given to those wooden bamboo ones that Bill played) and hanging guitar playing. The whole side is incredibly moving, reaching right in to you, guaranteed to pull some emotion out of anyone listening. Militant and sad, it’s an epic piece that could’ve been written in memoriam.

The dub-side goes in the opposite direction, a totally new creation done in a style to reference the dub work of Muslimgauze as much as the accompanying instrumentals to Aby Ngana Diop. Echoing reverb trips over itself as the solo hand-drumming becomes a larger sum than it’s original recording with Tapes’ edits. Moving along at a much faster pace than the A-side it shows yet another side of this music that the London based producer is capable of delivering on.

Released on Honest Jon’s you know you’ve got quality mastering, pressing, sleeve and product. Check out their press release below and a couple of clips someone stuck on youtube.

via Honest Jon’s
This started out a couple of years ago as a grounation drumming session above the old headquarters of the Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari, in Wareika Hill, Kingston, JA. Four funde, a repeta and a bass drum. Back in London, contributing flute and guitar, Kenrick Diggory unbottled the deep rootical psychedelia and sheer awe of Hunting – the Keith-Hudson-versus-Count-Ossie wonder of the world – and Tapes added electronics, a shot of Drum Song… and a giddily intense binghi dub. Total murder.