Felix NEill

Probably universally recognised as one of the best authentic reggae albums ever, Culture's debut strikes a lovely balance between the sweetness and light of the Jamaican sound and the righteous warnings of the Rastafarian faith. Lest there be any cultural imbalance here, I'm retaining my right to state that all religion is horeseshit, especially this brand of foreboding apocalyptic pessimism, but as with the early Christian music of the middle ages onwards, anything with a sense of spiritual certainty is undoubtedly powerful and often hot-wires our consciousness into a level of spirituality that even though we might not subscribe to that view, accesses our deepest wells of inner god in such a way that we can immediately appreciate the sincerity and passion - artifice though we feel it may be. If this isn't making any sense, unbelievers should go and have a look at Westminster Abbey or the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, Paris (or countless others, I'm sure. I've never seen Rome, although any little Norman village church seems fairly awesome to me on an architectural level). There's a good reason that those building are designed to inspire passion, fear and a sense of smallness in the face of a huge universe.

Also coming into play here is the multi-layered historical background of black struggle and the railing against Babylon which makes this pretty much irresistible to all forward thinking revolutionaries, be they black, white, poor or rich. There's something wonderfully rebellious in this stuff which just works on a primal as well as intellectual level.

Despite all that, this is also musically a massive achievement. A pinnacle distillation of the Seventies Jamaican reggae sound with a stellar cast of peak period musicians (including Sly and Robbie) and produced by the mighty Joe Gibbs.



This version is the 1978 UK reissue on Lightning records, which despite being funded by WEA always operated as an indie and had a weird catalogue of retro fifties rock 'n' roll and cutting edge Jamaican reggae. It was on Lightning that Althea and Donna had their wonderful number one hit, "Uptown Top Ranking" although it was the Johnny Rotten fronted Virgin Front Line that released their album in the UK.

In summary, this Peel favourite is the shit. As far as I know hasn't been released on CD in the UK, which is fucking criminal.

Vinyl rip at 320 Kbps.

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