RasItes ADD

Review

Review: RasItes - Reason Time EP

12/20/2013

RasItes first burst onto the English reggae scene in the late 90s cutting their debut album Urban Regeneration in 2001. There was a lot of excitement about the release - suggesting these young London Rastafarians were going to revitalise the moribund state of the music in its historic second outpost and recapture the glory of the likes of Aswad and Steel Pulse.

Sadly the group then fell into a dispute with their label Jetstar and their recording career was curtailed for a number of years. But as any regular London reggae show goer can tell you they have not gone away – for many a visiting artist has been backed by all or some of their constituent players. Under the management of Eddie Brown of Pride Music they recorded their Dean Fraser co-produced second album Sex Violence and Drugs in Jamaica – which after further delays was released in 2008 by Mad Professor’s Ariwa to minimal promotional fanfare.

Now independent, the quartet has decided to prioritise being a self-contained band over a backing outfit and has returned with this – the first of two scheduled EPs. The rhythms were laid in each of the members’ home recording spaces, voiced at the studio of Urban Regeneration engineer Fitzroy Wizard, and mixed by singer/guitarist Kashta Menelik at Prince Malachi’s musical base.

In some ways little has changed since Urban Regeneration. The four still play as a core unit without horns – mixing predominantly minor key roots reggae with dancehall elements and Menelik’s unashamedly rock guitars. But if anything, all that time playing back-up has left them even more musically accomplished than when they were youthful prodigies. The rhythms are multi-layered, the songwriting is ornate in the original UK reggae mode and the drum patterns are militant and complex. Yet there is no showing off – every note has its place. Also, where the production on Urban Regeneration feels slightly dated and comparatively tinny and thin – the sound here is expansive, fat and maintains the power of Jahmel Ellison’s bass.

Opener Drum and Bass Line’s is an update of Aswad's Drum and Bass featuring harmonised twin lead guitar attack, growling synths and deejaying by Ellison that sounds like Junior Gong’s famous verse on Stephen Marley’s Jah Army. Chant Dem Down - ushered in by an interview clip with Nyabinghi elder High Priest George Ions - utilises dancehall style voice processing and pitching and a hip hop/one drop fusion with doubled piano and bass to sterling effect. A scathing attack on the Jimmy Saville cover-up and the supermarket horsemeat scandal it features the lyric “know your place” – an unusual sentiment for a roots record – except here it is meant cosmologically. Girl Like You offers light, romantic, major key relief on a remake of the classic Studio 1 backing to the Heptones’ Pure Sorrows. Finally, the title track advances on the stalking revolutionary beat to Prince Alla's Lot's Wife with a lyrical request “come we go reason now” that has centred many great reggae songs through the ages from the Wailers to Freddie McKay.

Adding subtle improvements and consolidations while keeping the essential RasItes sound, this EP is actually better than Urban Regeneration. A second EP is due in 2014 with their third album to follow. Hopefully this talented group can maintain their course and keep the thread going. They deserve to succeed and there’s time for them to transform the reggae scene yet.