If you caught Smoke & Mirrors Sound System’s Undercover album consisting of their takes on rock, soul and reggae classics inna reggae stylee a couple of years back, you’ll understand why news of the new LP No. 10 Dubbing Street immediately made the monkey’s ears perk up. This time around, it’s not disparate tracks being covered but rather all the tracks on a single album by one band – as the title will indicate to anyone over a certain age, for this is a cover of Big Audio Dynamite’s second album No. 10 Upping Street. Big shoes to fill you might think (given that said LP marked the final musical collaboration of The Clash’s Mick Jones and Joe Strummer – the latter of whom wrote five of the tracks – in a group that also featured Don Letts) and yet SMSS certainly has the talent assembled from a vast and revolving personnel by bandleader John Roy. Joining him this time are such luminaries as Tippa Irie, Brother Culture, Crazy Baldhead’s Agent Jay and The Aggrolites’ Jesse Wagner and Roger Rivas with some of these and others taking control for the dub versions – for this is a double LP – featuring first the normal versions of B.A.D.’s tracks and then the dubs.
And so to the music which more than does justice to the original . The track order is exactly the same as on the original LP which means the LP kicks off with C’Mon Every Beatbox featuring none other than Alabama 3’s Zoe Devlin on vocals with the original’s 808 drum-powered punky rock re-cast as a much smoother organ-laced reggae groove. A similar transformation occurs on Beyond The Pale with Jukebox Band’s Eddie Skuller taking lead vocals while Limbo The Law is slowed down massively and the original’s vague percussive nod to samba brought to the foreground. Album highlight Sambadrome about Rio’s coke-dealing urban Robin Hood figure Escadinha in the 80s again foregrounds a samba element (at least on the intro and the bridge) after which we’re into more familiar reggae territory. And with The Aggrolites’ Jesse Wagner singing – this practically sounds like a new Aggrolites track. I don’t think anyone would pretend that Mick Jones was the world’s greatest singer so hearing Wagner on this is transformational – a great song made even greater but also a reminder that it’s been an extremely long time (again!) since the last time we had new Aggro material. Subsequently, V Thirteen is played pretty straight in a reggae version that keeps a similar tempo to the B.A.D. version and Rebelution UK’s Tony Devenish does his best Mick Jones – albeit a Mick Jones with a stronger voice and consistently in key. Easily most different to the original version it covers is Ticket, once gritty electro fronted by Don Letts, now a rumbling reggae number fronted by Tippa Irie and Brother Culture who totally change the lyrics while maintaining the exploration of the experience of Jamaican immigrants in the UK. Of the final two cuts, Dial A Hitman finds King Django filling in for Mick Jones on something that now sounds like a Slackers, or indeed King Django track while Sightsee MC’s abrasiveness is stripped right back to dubby moodiness. The vinyl version of the album comes in orange vinyl and when you add in the fact that original Big Audio Dynamite member Don Letts provides the sleeve notes to this project, it’s definitely not one to miss.
(Out now on Escape Hatch Records)