AMJ Meets RSD: Sky Blue Love

For a reggae band, AMJ is a very uncool name. But here it actually fits pretty well, because the band behind the name is also quite uncool. These are the drum & bass duo Andy Clarke and Mark Spence as well as the producer John Hollis, who played together in the Bristol band Restriction in the 1980s. So three older men who play a very neat reggae with a jazz flair. Interestingly enough, it is enriched with guest musicians from Cuba, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Colombia. Rodigan likes it and for a lazy Sunday afternoon I can also imagine it very well. But now comes the second acronym and that makes the whole thing super cool: RSD. The true Dubheads of course know that these three letters stand for Rob Smith, the musical genius who catapulted the sound of UK reggae into the here and now under the names More Rockers and Smith & Mighty in the 1990s, also from Bristol then to lay the foundation for what today Dubstep and UK bass is called. For several years he has been responsible for fantastically radical remixes, which are characterized by a powerful bass sound and stoic-repetitive beats. Crazy what happened next: of all people, this Rob Smith took on the rather soft sounds of AMJ and remixed their oeuvre: AMJ Meets RSD, Sky blue love (Astar Artes). The result is breathtaking in parts. From the good instrumental "Heartbeat" Smith mixed a pure pressure wave from bass. Even more unbelievable: “Serious Signs” begins with the lovely sounds of a Spanish guitar, before a bass attack suddenly sets in on bar 32, which sweeps everything else away with one stroke. A 20 Hertz tsunami. Most of the album, however, is much more moderate, gives space to the other instruments as well as the bass, models the very good arrangements and thus proves that AMJ are ultimately not that uncool. Smith pimps the sound, gives it rough edges and makes it ready for the dance floor - but also for the knowledgeable ear Dub-Connaisseurs. It shows again what a talented one Dub- A craftsman who knows how to turn the right knobs.