various artists - In Dub Daze: An On-U Sound Compilation

Amongst a wide range of industrial, deathrock, ambient, and acid house releases, there are a few gems in Cleopatra's 90s catalog. Although I couldn't appreciate it at the time, I can look at those first five years and say, "whoa, they really had their shit together". After all, they were the ones putting Kraftwerk's best records back in print on CD, putting out new stuff from Psychic TV and Helios Creed, and giving a young Ape his first exposure to Blitz, Angelic Upstarts, and Broken Bones. They licensed some hella good stuff, a fair amount of which it took me a long time to get into (looking at you, Kommunity FX). And they had strong distribution via Caroline, which meant you wouldn't necessarily have to crate dig in order to find something cool.

They compiled a bunch of the On-U Sound singles, initially released as vinyl only in the early 80s, across three CDs in 1996 and 1997. The first of these, "In Dub Daze", turned up in a cutout bin at Camelot Music in Harford Mall sometime during my first obsessive wave with dub.

...and that's where I left this, back in April, when I essentially quit writing for a few months. I'll leave the knob polishing alone from here on out...you get it: Cleopatra put out some solid reissues back in the 90s. Adrian Sherwood's collective isn't on the level of Scientist or Lee Perry to me, but it's summer, and when the heat dome camped out over the MSO Compound here in the PNW a few weeks back, it found myself playing this on repeat. It has some swelter on its side, some shimmy.

Discogs

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