Producer
Joe Gibbs took the credit for the four discs released in the mid-'70s under the title African Dub All-Mighty, but the musicians were in reality a shifting aggregation of members of the
Soul Syndicate,
We the People, and
Revolutionaries bands, and the man actually working the mixing board was famed sound engineer
Errol Thompson. On this first installment in the four-volume series, the dub mixes are actually quite tame -- they're unfailingly pleasant, but there are none of the challenging sonic gestures that characterized the work of colleagues like
King Tubby and (especially)
Lee "Scratch" Perry during the same period. But as mood music, Chapter 1 is a fine listening experience -- note in particular "Campus Rock" (a dub version of
Dennis Brown's "Let Me Live") and "Treasure Dub," which is a version of
the Jamaicans' rocksteady classic "Ba Ba Boom." Recommended. ~ Rick Anderson