READ: 'Turn Up The Heat' Album Breakdown - Track 1
One of my earliest memories is hearing the bass from my older brother Joe’s room coming from upstairs. I still remember as a kid walking into his room and seeing his yard tape collection which was literally ceiling to floor, with the other wall stacked with vinyl. This must have been around 89 so i would have been about 8 at the time. These are my first memories of being exposed to Reggae. My bro is 14 years older than me, so by this time he had been collecting for years. I remember his brown oversized wooden box speakers and the bass reverberating downstairs.. I still distinctly remember a few tunes from that window of time when he still lived with us. One of them was Giddy Up, by Horseman. I remember asking my brother to play the horse tune again and again!
Over 20 years later I heard the Prince Fatty & Horseman album and the reworking of ‘Giddy Up’ (renaming it Horsemove) took back to that moment in my childhood. I loved the Fatty & Horseman album. The production is so warm and tight and Horseman’s carisma just shines through. After listening to that album and playing a lot of the tracks in my sets (Computer always got the place hyped), I booked Fatty & Horseman to come and play at a few Reggae Roast dances. We kept bumping into each other at festivals and every time we would say “lets to a tune together” but we never got round to it.
When we were approaching the deadline for our album there was a riddim that we had been working on… It was a reworking of the Pioneers classic “Long Shot Kick De Bucket” which we were given access to by Trojan Records. I wanted to use it on the album but it hadn’t been voiced yet. It has a bit of a different tempo to most reggae tracks so I thought Horseman would be sick on it because of his mad flow. So I sent the track to Horseman and straight away he hit me back and said Yea mun, Yea mun, me love it, I want to do something with Natty Campbell”.
About a week later we recorded ‘Do It Again’. The thing I love about the track is the combination between Horseman and Natty Campbell, old school versus new generation. For me this represents what Reggae Roast is all about… paying homage to artists and music of yesteryear whilst moving the music forward and making it relevant for the new generation.
Without us knowing our label manager sent the track to Jackie Robinson from the Pioneers who replied with “It sounds like a hit, I love it”. The original is a stone cold classic, so to have our reworking endorsed by the original writers was a really nice touch.
Do It Again was actually the very last tune we recorded for the album. It was recorded about a week before we delivered the album and was recorded in one session with Natty & horseman. I think the whole thing took about an hour. I’m so glad we managed to voice it in time. The vibe in the studio that day was pure energy. Maybe we should do some more tracks together… hmmmmmm
