On 129 Beat Street, Junior Buyles and Friends — U Brown and Pablo Moses among them — voice “conscious” lyrics over as-tight rhythm arrangements, reflecting both reggae’s deep debt to American R&B — lots of horns, colorful vocalists — and the influence of Jamaica’s religious-political climate. While the lineage of each track here is mercifully detailed by Barrow in extensive liner notes, the spiritual, purposeful tone of songs like U-Brown’s rasta-anthem “So Long” — or, better still, “See a Man’s Face,” in which Neville Tate’s warm vibrato laments, “you can see a man’s face/but you can’t see God” over tasteful dubbing — shows how dub’s usual eccentricities are as effective at burrowing into consciences as for mental space travel. A big, hearty, Echoplexed bravo.
This article appears in Oct 14-20, 1998.