Roots Archives Forum

Black Solidarity Presents Robert Ffrench - Mr Babylon

sound quality is abysmal ...buyers beware

http://www.juno.co.uk/products/robert-f ... 573895-01/

j j

Probably pinched straight from vinyl sources

If I remember rightly the sound quality on his original albums were not top notch anyway.

My mate had a copy of The Favorite and from memory I`m sure that was fairly ropey.

Surprising that this sounds that bad, the one almost uniformly good thing about the **Jamaican Recordings** / **Kingstons Sounds** business has been that they at least had very good sound, coming from master tapes. (Actually I have enjoyed most of the **KS** releases, it is the **JR** that are the really dubious ones.)

Btw, this is actually on a third, specific, label they have created, **Black Solidarity**, I recently bought the only other release, *String Up The Sound System*, and that one sounded good enough, but I can't tell if it is correct as far as being what it says on the package, I don't quite have the knowledge to judge that.

99th Floor - Black Solidarity was it's own label long before Jamaican Rec/Kingston Sounds came into the business.

I believe BS was formed in 1979 by Ossie Thomas's & his mate Phillip Morgan.
To me the Black Solidarity label is now being used by Jamaican Rec, to release Ossie Thomas productions such as String Up...& Mr Babylon so BS is definitely not a recent label created by JR or KS.

Regarding your views on Kingston Sounds quality of sound - obviously you haven't listened to their Jah Stitch - Dread In A Jamdown album - many tracks suffer from high end distortion especially on Stitch's vocals.

cheers
j j

Cheers Rootsman, another even worse sounding R Ffrench release is his Showcase LP on the dubious Abraham label - unlistenable!

j j

After reading your post(s) I'm beginning to think that the reggae recording industry has some sort of severe grudge against our Mr Ffrench! :/

j j

j j wrote:99th Floor - Black Solidarity was it's own label long before Jamaican Rec/Kingston Sounds came into the business.

I believe BS was formed in 1979 by Ossie Thomas's & his mate Phillip Morgan.
To me the Black Solidarity label is now being used by Jamaican Rec, to release Ossie Thomas productions such as String Up...& Mr Babylon so BS is definitely not a recent label created by JR or KS.

Regarding your views on Kingston Sounds quality of sound - obviously you haven't listened to their Jah Stitch - Dread In A Jamdown album - many tracks suffer from high end distortion especially on Stitch's vocals.

Yes, I know it is an old label, I was just commenting that they now use it as the name of a sub label themselves, so this is BSCD002 instead of maybe KSCD0XX, or whatever (call it a bit of trainspotting, if you will).

I have the Jah Stitch, don't remember how it sounds, but I remember that it was not my favourite out of what I got from them and a bit of a dissappointement, I haven't listened to it much, maybe that was why. But I was just making a general stament, because I have quite a few of the KS CDs, that they mostly sound good (and different from masterings on other lables, when they have tracks that are common on other releases, probably because they are taken from tapes that the other lables have not had access to), some of it is probably new mixes, I haven't compared in detail, but that does not bother me with the vocal stuff, it can even be a fresh view on something I'm familiar with from before. But much else (recording dates, names of tracks, names of performers, etc.) can be very messed up, and it would of course be infinitely better if they could do all that stuff right and label their product correctly. As it is I take all that with a grain of salt and gamble a bit.

Now the dub stuff on the main Jamaican Recordings label itself on the other hand, that is just plain fraud (except for the handful of vintage original albums they have released), and I don't want them near my house.

sorry my misunderstanding.

j j

j j wrote:sorry my misunderstanding.

That's alright, I did say myself that "I don't quite have the knowledge", and I can see the misunderstanding. I am not an expert on the original Black Solidarity label, so I don't know if they made a lot of mistakes, as usual, on the first volume that I bought, but it's good music!

99thfloor wrote:Btw, this is actually on a third, specific, label they have created, **Black Solidarity**,

This is what had me confused with your post 99th Floor, but we have sorted it now:)

cheers
j j