Browse by Artist: HUDSON, KEITH

Artist:	HUDSON, KEITH
Title:	Playing It Cool
Label:	BASIC REPLAY (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	BRJT 009CD

First release on Basic Channel's new Jamaican reissue imprint, Basic Replay. "Keith Hudson -- as is Lloyd Bullwackie Barnes, his collaborator here -- was a one-off innovator with impeccably classical lineage: his first studio recording involved former Skatalites; his earliest releases provided solid-gold hits for Ken Boothe ('Old Fashioned Way,' 1967), John Holt, Delroy Wilson, U-Roy and the rest. Playing It Cool & Playing It Right was released in 1981 on the Joint International label, in NYC. It was originally intended that one of Hudson's teenage sons would voice the dubs: in the event the Love Joys, Wayne Jarrett, and most inimitably Hudson himself featured at the microphone. Like Wackies, Hudson was a Studio One devotee -- 'I used to hold Don Drummond's trombone for him so I can be in the studio,' he once recalled -- and the album follows Coxsone's recent strategy of overdubbing signature rhythms. The Studio One sides were aimed at the dancefloor; Hudson's reworks of tracks like 'Melody Maker' are more psychological. Here deep Barrett Brothers rhythms are remixed deeper with reverb, filters and other distortion, pitched down, everything; and overlaid with new recordings, often heavily treated, of guitar, percussion, keyboard, voice. Playing It Cool is legendary, strange, utterly compelling music."

Artist:	HUDSON, KEITH
Title:	Flesh of My Skin Blood of My Blood
Label:	BASIC REPLAY (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	BRAT 1005CD

"Flesh Of My Skin... is the most hallowed of all those reggae albums which remain unavailable, and Keith Hudson's key achievement in a career launched when as a fourteen-year-old he recorded members of The Skatalites on his Shades Of Hudson rhythm. Originally released in 1974, after a series of solid-gold productions for Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson, John Holt, U-Roy and the rest, it projects Hudson's removal from JA to London and New York studios and transatlantic audiences, and inaugurates a sequence of albums -- classics like 'Pick A Dub', 'Brand', 'Playing It Cool' -- which show his troubled experimentalism better suited to the LP than the cardinal 7" reggae format. Anchored here by Santa Davis and George Fullwood from the Soul Syndicate -- alongside musicians like Augustus Pablo, Count Ossie and Leroy Sibbles -- Hudson's mood is tormented and dazed, as on titles like 'Darkest Night', 'My Nocturne' and 'Testing My Faith' he struggles for Black senses of commitment --political, existential, religious -- at its breaking point. Magnificently and deadly serious, hauntingly unique, unmissable and unforgettable."

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