Amazon.co.uk: Music: Coughing Up Fire: “Occult roots of grime”
Just got this as a present off John Eden and it’s an absolutely magnificent record of eighties Brit dancehall reggae done live. Saxon were arguably the greatest British sound system ofthe 80s and on this CD you can hear why. It’s all about the DJs so the backing tracks scarcely get a look in. You get fragments of famous rhythms (Armagideon etc), mainly with the bass cut and constantly spun back, so don’t buy this to hear the tunes themselves. You also get massive amounts of crowd noise :-). But if you want to hear the apotheosis of the Brit chatting art, this is it. The biggest name on here is Tippa Irie, who gets a HUGE response, but all the MCs are on top form. If you want to know where grime (the most recent, and most MC-heavy, variant of garage) and the rest of UK rave MC culture came from, this is what you need to hear — and it’s a lot better than most yard tapes you’ll buy in Brixton market. Absolutely killer, and this is where jungle and breakbeat artists get a lot of their vocal samples from, so it’s spotter heaven…