Global Music Column – April

Horace Andy – Midnight Rocker

Few singers have better mirrored the mercurial sound of dub than Horace Andy. Finding prominence with a spate of singles recorded with producer and Lee “Scratch” Perry collaborator Bunny Lee in the mid-1970s, the Jamaican singer’s vibrato-heavy falsetto has become one of dub’s defining features, as well as featuring amid the nocturnal trip-hop of Massive Attack’s albums.

Over the past five decades, the legacy of Andy’s voice has reflected his music’s history. Just as the acetate of a dubplate wears with each play, giving the genre its uniquely decaying instrumental quality, so his voice has matured from the clean, high-register clarion call on breakout single Skylarking into a richer, more vulnerable tenor. His first collaboration with British dub pioneer Adrian Sherwood, Midnight Rocker is the perfect showcase for this late-career sound, revisiting a selection of Andy’s earlier material in addition to six new tracks.

Read the review in the Guardian.

[This piece was published on 25/03/22]