Reggae

Suns of Dub Meets Mighty Crown – Far East Mixtape

Suns of Dub and Mighty Crown just dropped a killer mixtape a few days ago.  Mighty Crown is a sound system out of Yokohama, Japan.  They have been in the game since 1993, but their “crowning” achievement was winning the 1999 World Clash Cup in New York City against established sounds like Killamanjaro and Tony Matterhorn.

Suns of Dub is a group led by Addis Pablo, the son of melodica king, Augustus Pablo.  Addis followed his father’s footsteps into music, and the melodica in particular.  The melodica was an instrument used to teach music in Jamaican schools, but was never really taken very seriously by professional musicians.  That changed in the early 1970s when record producer Herman Chin-Loy opened Aquarius Studios and started experimenting with new sounds.  He discovered a youth named Horace Swaby and recorded some of his early tracks using the melodica, which was particularly conducive to dub music.  Chin-Loy often used the generic name “Augustus Pablo” for various keyboard instrumentals on his tracks, but the name stuck with Horace, and the rest as they say is history.

I’m really digging this mixtape right now because of the variety of artists and sounds it features.  Mighty Crown in particular gets shout outs from big time artists including Chronixx, Jah9 and Jesse Royal to name just a few.  It’s an hour and twenty minutes long, but it seems to go by much faster than that, which is the hallmark of a great mixtape.  You can stream or download the mixtape from the SoundCloud link below.  Enjoy!

 

 

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