Black Uhuru Chill Out

Arguably the best of Black Uhuru's electrofied albums, even if its predecessor Red was the bigger sell, Chill Out is a seminal blend of styles and cultures. Produced by Sly & Robbie at Channel One Studio in Jamaica, and again backed by the Revolutionaries, ironically the album's greatest beneficiaries were the Riddim Twins, who were rocketed to international fame upon this record's release. They deserved it though, and Chill Out remains as much a tribute to their talent as the vocal trio's. Shakespeare lays down the sinuous bass which provides the foundation for the record's rootsy sound. The four guitarists, three leads, plus Ranchie McLean's reggae riffing, flit across the grooves and genres, touching down on funk, blues, R&B, and rock along the way. The pianists and Wally Badarou's synth add atmosphere, with Dunbar's heavy beats, combining drums with electro syndrums, add a throbbing pulse to the proceedings. The sound is extremely dense, but the producers still found plenty of space for Black Uhuru's sublime vocals.

The band's roots masterpieces are all here – "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "Sinsemilla," "Shine Eye Girl," "I Love King Selassie," "Youth of Eglington," and so on and so forth, in all 16 tracks that include virtually all their best work. Then again, most of these songs have been heavily compiled over the years, but what sets Universal Masters apart is its fabulous mix of album tracks, extended versions, dubs, and live numbers, deftly capturing the entire Uhuru experience. Drawn from 1979-1982, this is the period when the trio linked with Sly & Robbie and unleashed a stream of roots rockers masterpieces that established reggae as a world musical force and Black Uhuru as international stars.

This is an excellent reggae sampler. It should be obvious that everyone's first introduction to reggae should be Bob Marley's great LEGEND which is the reggae desert island disc of all time. That is the place to start for any introduction to reggae. This sampler is a good next step and includes classics from Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear, Black Uhuru, Toots and the Maytals, and many others. The rhythm section for many of these tracks is the famous Sly and Robbie duo…

On a session-to-session basis, in slightly varying combinations, drummer Sly Dunbar, percussionist Uziah "Sticky" Thompson, bassist Robbie Shakespeare, keyboardist Wally Badarou, guitarists Barry Reynolds and Mikey Chung, and engineer Alex Sadkin made up the in-house team at Island founder Chris Blackwell's Compass Point, a studio located just outside Nassau in the Bahamas. As Blackwell recalls in David Katz's excellent liner notes to this set, titled Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story 1980-1986.