Lovers Dub | 02

Where's My Soul - Baron Rétif & Concepción Perez
Stellar Bit Reason in Slave Su Fruity Loop (instrumental) - Stellar Bit 4
Love You More (Rocc Mix) - J Rocc
Dub Feeling - Dub Shepherds, Pinnacle Sound, The Dirty Makers
Walk On By (Jeremy Sole Reprise) - The Decoders feat. Noelle Scaggs
Sugar And Dub - Kofi
Didn't I (feat. Hollie Cook) - Night Owls
Emotional Dub - Susan Cadogan
Back Together Dub - Jean Adebambo
I Want Your Love (Version) - Brentford Disco Set
Live For Love (Kent Segolson) - Red Astaire
Thinking Of You - Lord Echo

"Where's My Soul (feat. Vimbai Mukarati)" — Baron Rétif & Concepción Perez

Paris duo of drummer Benjamin Fain-Robert and keyboardist Pierre Valero, profiled by David McKenna in The Quietus as the sleeper architects of contemporary French groove. The track opens their 2014 mini-LP L'Indien on Heavenly Sweetness, mixed by Charles Vetter at Turtle Cuts in Paris and mastered by Shawn Joseph at Optimum in Bristol. The label switch from Musique Large to Heavenly Sweetness sharpened their live and electronic hybrid, and Vimbai Mukarati's yearning topline floats over drum programming that already carries the dub-friendly DNA of their earlier "Sierra Leone / Souka Nayo." The instrumental version on the flip is the one selected here.

"Stellar Bit Reason in Slave Su Fruity Loop (instrumental)" — Stellar Bit 4

A short, weighty interlude from a Naples beatmaker who has been uploading instrumentals to SoundCloud since the mid-2010s under the Stellar Bit series, unlabeled beyond a volume number. The title nods to Slave's 1978 Cotillion classic "Stellar Fungk" and to the producer's chosen DAW. A selector's equivalent of pause-tape segues, made for blends and short of two minutes by design.

"Love You More (J Rocc Mix)" — J Rocc

A slow-burn lovers stepper edit that circulated as a J Rocc flip of Sade's "Love You More," part of the Beat Junkies founder's long-running affinity for her catalog. Okayplayer covered his fuller 2018 expression of that obsession, the twelve-track Sade and Mobb Deep mash-up project Thug Ballads, and J Rocc has otherwise stayed visible through his work as Madlib's tour DJ and his official edit projects on Stones Throw, notably the 2012 Minimal Wave Tapes releases. The Sade-flip strain of his catalog lives mostly on white-label and blog channels, where the source often remains veiled.

"Dub Feeling" — Dub Shepherds, Pinnacle Sound & The Dirty Makers

From Tape Me Out, Vol. 6 - Pressure Drop, released December 2024 on the Clermont-Ferrand independent BAT Records. Dub Shepherds (Joseph Parot and Alexis Chartier, alias Dr Charty) ran the rhythm at the BAT studio with Pinnacle Sound and The Dirty Makers loading the spring reverb, with Dr Charty also handling mastering. The Tape Me Out series operates as a proper UK-style live dub session translated to French stepper register, with vintage-leaning analog character throughout.

"Walk On By (Jeremy Sole Reprise) feat. Noelle Scaggs" — The Decoders

The Decoders are an LA studio trio of Itai Shapira, Adam Berg, and Todd M. Simon who LA Weekly profiled as the city's quietest operating production team, working from Berg's Manifest Music in Santa Monica. Their 2012 dub-reggae take on the Bacharach and David standard, with Noelle Scaggs of Fitz and the Tantrums on lead, became a quiet KCRW phenomenon after Anne Litt and Jeremy Sole spun it on air. Sole's "Reprise" appeared on Revisited & Reworked Vol. 2 at the end of 2013, lengthening the pocket and pushing Scaggs forward in the mix.

"Sugar And Dub" — Kofi

From Carol Simms' Wishing Well album, recorded with Mad Professor at Ariwa in 1992. Simms started in Brown Sugar, the harmony trio whose 1977 single "I'm In Love With A Dreadlocks" was the first record on Dennis Harris's Lover's Rock label and the moment that gave the genre its name. The 1988 British Reggae Industry Awards crowned her Best Female Vocalist on the strength of "Didn't I" and "Black Pride," and the Ariwa house band on this album lines up Black Steel, William The Conqueror, Drumtan Ward, and bassist Fitzroy Brown, with Mad Professor and Drumtan Ward sharing drum-programming credit. The cut captures the label’s early-’90s lovers sound.

"Didn't I (feat. Hollie Cook)" — Night Owls

Night Owls are the rhythm section of guitarist Dan Ubick, drummer Blake Colie, bassist Dave Wilder, and keyboardist Roger Rivas, four LA musicians from The Lions and The Aggrolites who first locked in together backing Hollie Cook on tour. They reimagine Oakland soul man Darondo's plaintive 1973 cut as a Black Disciples-inspired tropical rocksteady, with Cook floating over Rivas's organ. The track was first issued in August 2023 as a double A-side 7-inch with their Wendy Rene flip "After Laughter," recorded and mixed by super producer Ubick at The Lions Den in Topanga, then collected onto Versions II in 2025.

"Emotional Dub" — Susan Cadogan

A Japanese bonus track from Cadogan's Soulful Reggae, her 1992 Ariwa album with Mad Professor and the dub-side counterpart to her vocal "Emotions,"(a Bee Gees cover). Cadogan's Lee Perry-produced "Hurt So Good" had already delivered her a UK number four in 1975, recorded at the Black Ark with Boris Gardiner on bass and the Zap Pow horns before the singer returned to her librarian post at the University of the West Indies. The Mad Professor sessions found her again, with the Professor's customary effects pulled back to give her phrasing the room it deserved.

"Back Together Dub" — Jean Adebambo

The dub side of Jean Adebambo and Trevor Walters' 1988 cover of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway's "Back Together Again," reissued by Athens of the North in 2019. Adebambo was born in Islington to a Montserratian mother and a Nigerian father, drifted into the music business while training as a nurse, and broke through with the sublime "Paradise" in 1980 for Leonard "Santic" Chin. After a string of hits she returned to nursing as a health visitor in Bermondsey, was coaxed back onstage at the 2008 Brixton Lovers Rock Gala. The catalog has steadily found new listeners since.

"I Want Your Love (Version)" — Norma White & Brentford Disco Set

Norma White's 1979 vocal cover of Chic, paired on the original Studio One 12-inch with the Brentford Disco Set's instrumental version. Coxsone Dodd and Jackie Mittoo produced, and the rhythm section running the "Brentford Disco Set" alias was Studio One's house band working at the Brentford Road address, taking Edwards and Rodgers's melody and handing it back to Coxsone for a drum-and-bass-forward treatment. The pairing came back into circulation through Soul Jazz's Studio One Disco Mix excavations.

"Live For Love (feat. Kent Segolson)" — Red Astaire

Stockholm producer Fredrik Lager, who recorded as Red Astaire, Freddie Cruger, 3 Foot People, and Wildcookie before passing in June 2022, left enough vault material to fill Ear Candy Instrumentals Vol. 1 (and another LP could follow.) Kent Segolson plays saxophone on this cut, the father of Lager's longtime collaborator Linn Segolson; the original vocal version sat on Linn and Freddie's Wunderlust EP from 2004. Lager broke through in 2003 with the G.A.M.M. bootleg "Follow Me" and made his proper debut on Tru Thoughts with Soul Search in October 2006, picking up early support from Gilles Peterson, Erykah Badu, Jazzy Jeff, and Bobbito Garcia along the way.

"Thinking Of You" — Lord Echo

Wellington's Mike August, who works as Lord Echo and previously as Mike Fabulous in The Black Seeds and Shogun Orchestra, closed his 2010 debut Melodies with this disco-reggae translation of the Sister Sledge ballad, with Lisa Tomlins on lead. Oliver Wang's Soul Sides called it a song that could pass for a missing cut from Soul Jazz's Hustle! Reggae Disco compilation, which is exactly the register. The track later spun out as a 2012 Jakarta Records 7-inch edit from Berlin, limited to 200 hand-numbered copies, and again on Wonderful Noise's Japan-tour 7-inch with "Thinking Of Dub" on the flip. The trilogy that began here ran through Curiosities (2013) and Harmonies (2017), and this exquisite cover is our finale-worthy selection.

Listen to: Lovers Dub | 03