Sly & Robbie - Reggae Greats: A Dub Experience (1985)

The Sly & Robbie installment in Mango's Reggae Greats series is a skimpy and not terribly exciting collection of dub versions culled from their work with various reggae singers. The raw material is beyond reproach -- "Destination Unknown," for example, is a remix of Black Uhuru's "Chill Out," "Assault on Station 5" is based on "Revolution" by the great Dennis Brown, and "Jailbreak" is a version of Junior Delgado's "Fort Augustus." Perhaps the most effective of these tracks is "Skull & Crossbones," an excellent dub version of "Danger Zone" by Flabba Holt. In all cases, the trademark Sly & Robbie sound -- the rock-solid, minimalist basslines and the snare drum that sounds like a bullet hitting concrete -- is in full effect. However, most of these dub mixes sound tame, almost enervated, as if they were put together by someone with a hangover. All of them are pleasant enough, but few of them say anything new or especially interesting about a reggae subgenre that should always, at a minimum, be interesting.~Reggae Greats: A Dub Experience Review by Rick Anderson