Various - Watch How the People Dancing: Unity Sounds From the London Dancehall 1986-1989

Brilliant, haughty Jamaican avant-gardism, inspired by Jammy’s Sleng Teng explosion, rearing up at a Hackney crossroads opposite techno, hiphop, breakbeat and rave.

Presented as a next-generation companion to London Is The Place For Me: the mood is more defiant — a Jamaican secession from London — with themes of inner-city sufferation running alongside hymns to the dancehall and the herb superb.

Including a long interview with soundsystem- and label-boss Ribs, and many photographs. (The CD comes with a forty-page booklet.) Brilliantly mastered by Moritz from Basic Channel.


‘There’s a whole heap of stuff that we did at that time, different even to the music, that we didn’t really know what we were doing, we just done it.  This feeling on the records, we did that with everything we did, it was just the vibes that we were carrying then, it was all about one massive vibes.  Even with the sound, we weren’t going to choose something that somebody else did, we definitely was going to choose something that somebody else didn’t use.  We wanted to go out there and say, Yeah, this is the wickedest thing, everyone has to know, and nobody else can’t tell we no different.  We pushed it that way, we carried on that way.’