Faithful to their policy of digging up albums buried too quickly, the members of the Paris label Makasound have picked up their pickaxe again to search the circle of lost albums and have found "Fire & Rain" by Mikey Ras Starr.
Bassist, composer, singer, Mikey Ras Starr is a close associate of Winston McAnuff (he played bass on the album "What a Man a deal with"), Makasound's official guide to the Kingston back catalogues. Ras Starr is one of the men in the shadows of Jamaican music. He played on hits like Graduate in Zion by Kiddus I (on the soundtrack of the film "Rockers"), on Same Song by Israel Vibration, and, ultimate glory, had one of his tracks produced by Bob Marley himself (Got to say love). Shortly after, in the early 80's, he made a radical turn in his career: exile in the United States, a change of name to Haile Maskel and a new group, The Rastafarians.
Musically, one notes that after the Meditations and McAnuff, Makasound has again (re)discovered a singer with a deep, low voice, as shown by the superb echoing chorus of Coomaya (African Herbsman) . The album also benefits (and above all) from an exceptional production, in the purest tradition of late 70's roots reggae. To be convinced, one only has to listen to the break on Tafari Safai, the finesse of the rimshot on the dub of Got to Say, and the plethora of hits lined up on this album. Had it come out in its day, this record could easily have sat on the shelves as a reggae classic. Now it is.
