Lovers Dub | 04

"Positive Touch" — Nightmares On Wax vs Adrian Sherwood

"Even After All (Dub)" - Finley Quaye

"The Dub (It's Coming)" - Reggae Regular

"With You Boy" - Révélation

"Disco Instrumental" - Pinky & Perky with the Cool Notes

"Message From Dub" - Dub Specialist

"The Beat Goes On Dub" - Hollie Cook

"Gimme Good Loving" - Natural Touch

"Wall Street" - Jackie Mittoo

"You Can’t Turn Me Away (Mato Reggae Mix)" - Mato

"Love or Physical (Instrumental)" - Granti Asher & Paulette Tajah

"Body Fusion" - Michael Prophet

"You Know How To Make Me Feel So Good" - Ruddy Thomas & Susan Cadogan

"Rhythm Rocker" - Dennis Bovell

"Waiting In Vain (Dub)" - Johnny Clarke Dillinger

"Positive Touch" — Nightmares On Wax vs Adrian Sherwood

Nightmares on Wax handed Adrian Sherwood the tapes of In A Space Outta Sound for its twentieth birthday and let him rework them on In A Space Outta Dub. "Positive Touch" is what became of "Me!", grown out of the original's opening wah-wah lick, with Doug Wimbish on bass. Wimbish came up in the Sugar Hill Records house band, played the bass on "The Message" and "White Lines," then spent the next forty years in Sherwood's orbit through Tackhead and On-U Sound. He also turns up on a 1984 Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes side, which hints at one location where this mix is headed. Warp places the album beside Massive Attack's No Protection and Spoon's Lucifer On The Moon, both Sherwood productions.

"Even After All (Dub)" — Finley Quaye

"Even After All" carried Finley Quaye's 1997 Epic debut Maverick a Strike, to double platinum and a BRIT for Best British Male Artist. The dub version arrived later the same year. Quaye’s father Cab Kaye played jazz piano across postwar Europe and held a Ga chieftaincy in Accra, his half-brother Caleb played guitar for Elton John, and (per his own claim) was the half-brother of Maxine Quaye, Tricky's late mother and the namesake of Maxinquaye. Tricky publicly disputed the kinship. The dub version on the mix found its long afterlife when Groove Armada folded it into their Late Night Tales series.

"The Dub (It's Coming)" — Reggae Regular

The Dub (It's Coming)" appears on Down In The Dub Vaults (Greensleeves/VP, 2023), the archival set curated by Channel One Soundsystem selector Mikey Dread from the Greensleeves vaults. The album mirrors ten vocals with ten dubs; "The Dub (It's Coming)" sits in the position mirroring "The Black Star Liner," Reggae Regular's signature tune. The seven-piece formed in London in 1976, keyboardist George Clark writing an anthem named for Marcus Garvey's shipping line, founded in 1919 to carry the diaspora home. Channel One still runs strictly vinyl off a single turntable, recently winning the 2010 Red Bull Culture Clash.

"With You Boy" — Révélation

Written by Steve Loblack and sung by the barely documented Révélation, first appeared on a 1978 London 12-inch for Write Sounds, backed with "Jah Feelings." A year later it resurfaced on Rite Sound out of Toronto with Jackie Mittoo in the producer's chair and the arrangement stretched to ten minutes, the vocal dissolving into an extended dub passage. Mittoo is the major influence on the cut: the Studio One keyboard architect had relocated to Canada, where Jamaica to Toronto chronicles him leading the charge that built a Canadian reggae community from scratch. Mittoo returns later in the mix with his own classic.

"Disco Instrumental" — Pinky & Perky with the Cool Notes

Pinky and Perky are the Cool Notes' lead vocalists, Lauraine Smart and Heather, moonlighting on Pat Rhoden's Jama imprint while their own band backs them. The A-side of the Jama 12-inch covers the Three Degrees' "Woman in Love," a Giorgio Moroder production and UK top-ten hit in early 1979, which makes the flip's title accurate twice over: it really is the disco, as an instrumental, translated into a South London drop across nearly eight minutes. The Cool Notes had been recording for Jama since 1978, when "My Tune" nearly crossed over. The band later shed the lovers output, built the Abstract Dance label, and rode "Spend the Night" to number 11 in 1985. 

"Message From Dub" — Dub Specialist

"Message From Dub" sits on side a of Dub Store Special, a 1974 Studio One LP pressed in Kingston with silk-screened covers and barely any packaging at all, recorded at 13 Brentford Road. Dub Specialist was the house alias Coxsone Dodd stamped on the label's dub album series, a run that ended when Dodd left Brentford Road for New York at the decade's close. This cut comes from Dub Store Special, pressed in 1974, with more than four thousand Discogers now chase fewer than six hundred copies. The track resurfaced this decade on Soul Jazz's Studio One Music Lab, a comp built around the studio's reggae, funk, and dub collisions.

"The Beat Goes On Dub" — Hollie Cook

Hollie Cook grew up with a Sex Pistol for a father and Boy George for a godfather, then got drafted into the re-formed Slits. Cook later resurfaced as a tropical pop singer chasing Janet Kay and Phyllis Dillon, cutting her debut with Prince Fatty and elders George Dekker and Dennis Bovell. For Hollie Cook In Dub, Fatty ran the album through his rub-a-dub manner, "with fingers, late night vibes and re-arranged with a razor blade." Underneath sits the Whispers' "And the Beat Goes On," the SOLAR smash that topped the American soul and dance charts in 1980. The track continues the mix theme: disco, stripped for parts, recast in London at half the speed.

"Gimme Good Loving" — Natural Touch

Lovers rock is one of the few genres named after a record label, formed by Dennis Harris with Dennis Bovell and John Kpiaye, taking the name from an Augustus Pablo track, and the label title became the genre's name. Natural Touch’s Learoy Green came to Dennis Harris's Eve studio in Lewisham to demo with his band; the backing singers at the session became Brown Sugar, and Green ended up drumming on "I'm In Love With A Dreadlocks" and "Black Pride," the anthems that gave the Lover's Rock imprint its hits. One of those teenage voices, Caron Wheeler, later fronted Soul II Soul. Natural Touch, formed with singer Pauline Thomas, pressed "Gimme Good Loving" as a stamped white label on NK Records in 1983, Neville King on the production credit. Two years later it landed on Reggae Hits Volume One.

"Wall Street" — Jackie Mittoo

"Wall Street" comes from Showcase, the 1980 Studio One LP so scarce that Soul Jazz and Honest Jon pressed the track onto a 12-inch for the first time in 2008, with "Oboe" on the A-side, capping at 1,000 copies worldwide. As Studio One's teenage musical director, Mittoo built the catalog Jamaica has versioned ever since; his "Peanie Wallie" became the Wailers' "Duppy Conqueror," and his co-write "Armagideon Time" ended up with The Clash. Mittoo relocated to Toronto, running a record shop and producing the city's transplanted Jamaicans. He died there in 1990, at 42. Canada awarded Macka Fat the Polaris Heritage Prize in 2024, citing the Jamaica-to-Toronto pipeline.

"You Can't Turn Me Away (Mato Reggae Mix)" — Mato feat. Lady Gatica

Sylvia Striplin, a Sugar Hill kid raised in the North Bronx, cut "You Can't Turn Me Away" for Roy Ayers' Uno Melodic label in 1981 after singing in his Eighties Ladies, and Give Me Your Love politely went nowhere. Crate diggers would go on to canonize it, and Erykah Badu would go on to rework it with "Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)." Striplin died in 2013 having watched her flop outlive most hits. The newest version comes from Paris, where Mato and Lady Gatica slow it to a one-drop for Stix Records, a French rendition that sounds straight off Brentford Road. 

"Love or Physical (Instrumental)" — Granti Asher & Paulette Tajah

Howard Hill ran soundsystems in Brixton and pressed machine-led riddims with reggae skank on his Passion Enterprises label; "Love or Physical" arrived in 1990, four versions on one 12-inch, with Granti Asher on the rhythm and Paulette Tajah on the vocal. Ashford & Simpson had put the title Love or Physical on a Capitol album one year earlier. The strings reach for Soul II Soul, the bass reaches for the floor, and for thirty-five years the record was a holy grail for collectors. Isle of Jura licensed the instrumental for its first reissue on Instrumental Dubs #3 in February 2025.

"Body Fusion" — Michael Prophet

Michael Prophet’s "Body Fusion" appeared in 1989 for Howard Hill's Brixton label, with vocal and dub versions across a stamped white label 12-inch. The song comes from Starvue, whose 1980 original on Midwest International Records, produced by Clarence Johnson and written by Judy Davis, became one of rare groove's most chased records. Then cames the Lovers swerve when Prophet cut his version in London during the run-up to his biggest UK success, the 1990 reggae chart-topper "Your Love," followed by the Get Ready album on Passion and Greensleeves. Isle of Jura's 2025 reissue put the version back in circulation beside its label sibling "Love or Physical."

"You Know How To Make Me Feel So Good" — Ruddy Thomas & Susan Cadogan

Susan Cadogan was an assistant librarian at the University of the West Indies when Lee Perry heard her in the studio, renamed her, and cut "Hurt So Good." It flopped in Jamaica until Dennis Harris issued it in Britain, Pete Waterman carried it to Magnet, and it reached number four. Then she went back to the library. Ruddy Thomas ran sessions for Joe Gibbs and kept a second identity as Flick Wilson, a falsetto roots singer at Studio One. Together they spent eight weeks atop the UK Black chart with the cut's Virgin 12-inch licensed from Hawkeye and arranged by Franklyn "Bubbler" Waul. The original comes from Wake Up Everybody, released by Philadelphia International in November 1975, the last Blue Notes record to feature Teddy Pendergrass, with Sharon Paige duetting alongside Pendergrass and Melvin.

"Rhythm Rocker" — Dennis Bovell

Before the dub master title, Dennis Bovell was a teenager running the Jah Sufferer sound system in South London. He engineered at Dip Records, the outfit that became the Lovers Rock label, and in 1979 he wrote "Silly Games" for Janet Kay, having heard Ella Fitzgerald shatter a glass in a Memorex advert and wanting a note every woman at the dance would try to hit. It went to number two, with Drummie Zeb of Aswad on drums. "It was constructed to be a hit," Bovell said. Fourteen years later he returned to Arawak for Dub Dem Silly, with "Rhythm Rocker" as the opener.

"Waiting In Vain (Dub)" — Johnny Clarke & Dillinger

A raw dub version of a haunting Marley classic closes out the set, with Johnny Clarke's single (and first hit) released with no artist name on the record, because the label’s Rupie Edwards did not bother to print one. It was a hit anyway. Bunny Lee, who owned no studio and paid for time by the hour, kept costs down by having the Aggrovators replay riddims they already knew, and Clarke hung around the sessions so constantly that Lee nicknamed him the studio idler. He made his name on Earl Zero's "None Shall Escape the Judgement," which Jonathan Richman later took into the UK top five as "Egyptian Reggae" under his own writing credit. Clarke covered Marley more than once ("No Woman No Cry," "Time Will Tell"), was twice named Jamaica's Artist of the Year, split with Lee in the late seventies, and moved to London in 1983 to work with Jah Shaka and Mad Professor.

Listen to: Lovers Dub | 01