A founding member of Israel Vibration, Apple Gabriel has known a long exile up to this new album. A first solo album, "Another Moses", sealed the split with Wiss and Skelly in 1998. The man many agreed to consider the engine of the trio and the author of some of its biggest tracks (We A De Rasta, There is No End, Rude boy Shuffling, Lift Up Your Conscience...) nevertheless gradually faded away.
For after that first opus, there is hardly any trace of him. An appearance on Groundation’s album "We Free Again" in 2004, a few concerts... and nothing more until this new album, "Teach Them Right", produced by the Dutch label Jahsolidrock, already at the helm of Chezidek’s latest album, "Judgement Time".
After illness, it was poverty that Apple had to fight, going through a period of destitution that left him homeless. A calvary he evokes on this very autobiographical second album. "To all those who sleep in the street, I know your tears", he proclaims on In The Jungle, the best of these ten tracks (completed by seven versions).
With his preserved voice and strengthened mysticism, Apple Gabriel finds polished productions, able to host his well-known modulations, with a brass section (including the Frenchman Cedric Munsch aka Tribuman) and the obligatory backing singers. Like the opening Mr Conman, or the title track, "Teach them right" settles into the tradition of Apple’s compositions.
A real success that Apple Gabriel, in conflict with Jah Solid Rock, has decided not to support, considering that the work is not finished. Yet here he held what it takes to make his big comeback.
