Tiki Tropical!

Former Concretes' frontwoman Victoria Bergsman released her third album last month as Taken By Trees. Following the excellent Eden LP which Bergsman recorded in Pakistan she's now been to Hawaii to record the follow-up Other Worlds. I love the whole Hawaiian sound of steel guitars and tropical beats mixed with Bergsman's soft laid back vocal style. Produced by Henning Fürst this album is the perfect accompaniment to to the summer, so listening to this in the cold autumn months soon warms you up inside deeming of hotter climates.

Intro song Horizon starts with the sound of the sea while coconut shells clip clop out the beat and the first sounds of Hawaiian steel guitars subtly twang in the background. Highest High drifts with ease and grace, filling your head with beautiful sounds of tiki wooden percussion, whirring guitars and Augustus Pablo-esque melodica. Dreams sets off into a faster pace with balearic beats and more luscious steel guitars.

Pacific Blue adds to the tropical mood with ocean-breeze steel pans and a easy going carnival beat. Only You sounds like a lost Cure song re-imagined by Bergman. Large ups the pace once more for a skanking ska beat with horn section and intricate percussion giving us a calypso flavour. Dub reggae tune Indigo dub is pure horizontal relaxation and blends nicely into reggae tinged I Want You. The album finishes with Dreams (Coconut Cut) bringing the sound back to where it started laying in a hammock on the beach sipping on a planters punch. Wonderful. Highly Recommended.

Buy it on iTunes here.

What were the skies like when you were young?

Late night chill-out with Golden Clouds, The Orb's re-tooling of their seminal work Little Fluffy Clouds with Lee Scratch Perry on board to ad-lib his usual ramshackled rapping style. 

From their latest LP - The Orb Presents the Orbserver in the Star House (feat. Lee Scratch Perry) 

Buy here on iTunes

Some nice late night dub for you, this bounces along with the sweetest beat. Loving the Liquid Stranger - obliterates the boundaries separating dubstep, grime, dub, breaks, hip hop and outernational crunkadelica. No less!

Bombaclaad Star appears on the new Liquid Stranger album The Arcane Terrain. You can get the full album over on band camp here.

A nice dubbed out version of Steve Mason's Boys Outside. Andy Weatherall minces it through the echo chamber to create a completely new track that still retains to soul of the original. The original version is the title track of Mason's album that came out back in May 2010. Epic dub, love it!

But it on iTunes

Pink Floyd's introspective prog masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon as a dub reggae album on 2003's Dub Side of the Moon was genius. Easy Star All-Stars have now commissioned a remix album to give a different spin on their dub versions. Each track features a unique dub producer exploring spaced-out reggae and bass-heavy remixes of the original Dub Side of the Moon, Can it get any dubber? Hell yeah - Dubber side of the Moon is another triumph, some remixes work better than others Mad Professor, Scientist, Adrian Sherwood and Jazzwad, and Alchemist turning in best reworks. This Dubmatix remix of Speak to Me/Breathe gets my vote as the cream of the crop, speeding it up and making the bass even heavier. This is superb - Turn up the bass bins!

Like this/ Try: Dubmatix, Lee Scratch Perry, King Tubby

Matt Black and Jon More's (aka Coldcut) Ninja Tune label is twenty year old! To celebrate this milestone they have a released a 4xCD compilation of new stuff, new remixes of classic ninja cuts. There are some cracking tunes on this, this is a new one from the mighty Mr. Scruff & Kirsty Almeida, a superb piece of dirty funk dub.

Turn up the bass bins and feel the floor move.

Ninja Tune XX Official site, Buy it on Ninja Tune

Matthew Dear's latest LP is still on heavy rotation at neoloop. The single and epic track Little People (Black City) is the main staple of a great album, Black City, released via Ghostly. The single version features two remixes from UK producer Mark E. This is the Mark E remix, there is also a dub version. Although this is quite dubbed out anyway - I like the laid-back groove and cowbell loop of this version, and I'm also loving the abstract cover art for this single, so here's a big image to feast your eyes on...

Buy it on iTunes

Tosca release an album of remixes of their most recent No Hassle LP this month, which stays in tradition with the Tosca modus operandi. There's been at least one remix album for each original Tosca album to date. Such is the quality of Richard Dorfmeister & Rupert Huber's Austrian band output that all the remixed versions of their albums are always a sure fire success. Pony No Hassle Versions LP is no different, this track is transformed by Grant Phabao into dub reggae groove and a tad more upbeat than the original. Perfect chilled out tunes that still get your toe tapping.

Like This? Try: Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, Peace Orchestra, Boozoo Bajou

But it on iTunes

Another new album out this month, the eagerly anticipated Tango 3.0 from Gotan Project. The usual high quality of tangotronica insures that all Gotan fans are not disappointed. Gotan Project's debut La revancha del tango quickly established itself as the benchmark for this genre of music, reworking old tango classics, taking tango to the masses and soundtracking a thousand catwalk shows - that was back in 2000 and remains one of my all -time classic LP's. Astor Piazzolla, the godfather of Tango in still very much evident in the Gotans sound. Tango and latin melodies twisting together with dub and house grooves makes for a very relaxing headphone chill-out, but are equally as effective stomping on the dancefloor with a rose between its teeth. Basically it's more of the same and if it aint broke don't fix it. Love the cover art too! Can't wait for the live show coming to London Brixton Academy next month.

Like this? Try: Astor Piazzola, Bajofondo, Tosca

Official site, Buy it on iTunes

In the mood for some Dark dancehall? Look no further than Diplo and Jayou's remix of The Partysquad's Murderer, and it's murder on the dance floor! After a few listen's this really sucks into your head, the skanking guitars and booming dub beat pound on relentlessly before an light skanking interlude interrupts and sends the whole track into space via a badass an echo chamber. The Partysquad are positively massive in their home country of the Netherlands. Murderer freaks out the Barrington Levy track of the same name. I'm loving' it!

Find out more at Mad Decent, Buy the full EP on iTunes, Bands place in MySpace

Woozy organs carry you through the disturbing dubby darkness while Robert Del Naja's hushed rap caresses the moody beats. Yes! Massive Attack return with a new album next month, the duo’s fifth studio album, Heligoland (named after a German archipelago in the north sea) is out 8 February, 7 years after the release of their last album, the disappointing 100th Window. All in all Heligoland is an accomplished album, with their well respected eclectic address book they have pulled in an impressive cast of vocalists, Damon Albarn, Guy Garvey, Martina Topley-Bird, Horace Andy, TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe and Hope Sandoval. Atlas Air is the album's closer, a reworking of a previous live track called Marrakech. I still long for the soulful euphoria of their debut album Blue Lines, that will remain an all time classic, we just have to accept that they were a different band then and it will never be repeated. Heligoland is due for a complete rework from dubstep producer Burial much in the same vein as '95's Mad Professor's remixing of No Protection. Certainly one to look out for.

Pre-Order new album on iTunes, Official Site

This has an almost lounge vibe to it, with Japanese ladies singing along to the ainu dub beat rhythms. A chilled out Sunday afternoon, kick back and relax to some Japanese dub. Taken from the album Dub Ainu.

Oki is an Ainu Japanese musician. His real name is Oki Kanō (加納 沖) and he is from Kanagawa Prefecture. Oki mixes traditional Ainu music with reggae, dub and other styles of world music.

Official Site, Oki on iTunes, Oki Ainu Dub Band on iTunes

Turn up your bass bins, if they can handle it!

If your in the mood for some original chilled out reggae, take this for a spin. A reggae re-interpretations of an Eddie Palmieri salsa classic. Cool Cuban cha cha cha backed up with a skanking dub riddim and brass from babylon. Rich vocals from Mayra Vega singing like her life depended on it. Plus a superb piano solo in the middle.

Brooklyn's Ticklah is a founding member of the excellent Easy Star All-Stars, with whom he co-produced Dub Side of the Moon; he played keyboards on that release and contributed to its follow up, Radiodread. This track is taken from his 2007 album Ticklah Vs Axelrod.

Ticklahs place in MySpace, Axelrod's place in MySpace, Easy Star All-Stars Official site.

But it from Easy Star Records

I read the news today oh boy!

I think some Beatles tunes you just can't fuck with, and A Day In The Life is one of them. But my main man Big Twix (@bigtwix) played this and I loved it, something about Reggae that makes you get away with it. As Big Twix sez 'you can hear the love when they made this'. The whole album is a reggae version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Dub Band by the same lot that done the dub side of the moon and Radiodread, featuring many top draw reggae artists.

Return From The Planet DUB!

The Dub master that is Lee Scratch Perry returns with a new album collaborating with Vienna dub pioneers Dubblestandart. This a cover of the old Max Romeo track Chase the Devil, as covered and sampled by many artists over the years. Everything Lee Scratch Perry touches turns to gold, the master old the golden age of Reggae. Stick your headphones on, spark up a fat one and lose yourself in dub.

Buy more Lee Scratch Perry on iTunes

Bands place in MySpace - myspace.com/dubblestandart

Lee's place in MySpace - myspace.com/leescratchperry