Even though the brilliant Clive Hunt had already dabbled in dub in New York in 1977 with African roots act I, more than 30 years had elapsed until the release of Clive Hunt & the Dub dancers on Makasound. It is difficult to introduce Clive Hunt in a few words. A Jamaican musician, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer, he is a genuine genius of music, well beyond reggae. One ultimate reference on his CV: he is the architect of the Abyssinians' album Satta Massagana, the best reggae recording ever made, say the specialists. While the list of artists he has worked with is as long as your arm, the French public knows him above all for his work with Bernard Lavilliers, Khaled and Pierpoljak, via the record company Barclay. Last year, Clive Hunt confided in us that it was now time for him to produce not only music, but also records. Mission accomplished with the French label Makasound, for a dub album that brings together fairly modern mixes of tracks produced on his own account. This explains the long list of credited musicians, all famous, Clive Hunt having always surrounded himself with the cream of the crop in this field.
Let's say it straight away, this is a genuine dub album, with a modern sound: the announced featurings are discreet to say the least and the vocal passages can be counted on the fingers of one hand. All the more so as Clive Hunt seems to have taken mischievous pleasure in blowing up the versions with plenty of effects and sound noises. The mixing work is advanced and the tracks, rather long and with multiple moods, are anything but monotonous: Clive Hunt's signature is omnipresent. A few tracks will nonetheless hold the attention more particularly. First, the well-manipulated dub of Satta I. This is the historical landmark of the opus: the song recorded and sung by Clive Hunt under the name Lizzard in 1976 thus appears in a previously unreleased dub version. His turn behind the microphone was an accident: "I wanted to do this song for Bunny Gayle, a singer who worked at Lee Perry's, Clive Hunt revealed. But he never came, so I sang it myself. If you listen carefully to the song, you hear me laughing, because someone came into the studio and saw me singing. A friend heard the recording and asked me to give it to him. Two weeks later, he called me from New York to tell me that everybody there loves the song. He asked me what name he should use. As I have a little brother, Willard, who at that time was singing in competitions, I wanted to pay tribute to him so I said: 'Willard'. And he said on the phone: 'What? Lizzard?' I answered: 'Yeah, go on, whatever you like'."
Second surprise, the dub of Groovin' my girl by Richie Spice, which reminds us that Clive Hunt was one of the singer's first producers. Apart from these two essential tracks, we come across already familiar riddims such as the excellent Letter from Zion (Guns & guns), two versions of the Tonight riddim (Night afta dub and Night dub), an adaptation of Dennis Brown's Cassandra and Bob Marley's Stiff necked fools (in which Luciano's voice can be recognised) or a murderous Cuss cuss (Gangsta flex). At the risk of disorienting with its modern, deconstructed stance, Clive Hunt delivers a surprising album that puts Jamaica back in the dub race, a genre neglected on the island.
