Sylford Walker & Welton Irie - Lamb's Bread International

Sylford Walker & Welton Irie
Lamb's Bread International ( Blood & Fire BAFCD033)



Re-released in 2000 by Blood & Fire Records, this is the original "Lamb's Bread" album by Sylford Walker plus corresponding DJ cuts by Welton Irie, all produced by Glen Brown and released as singles between 1978 and 1982, and it's classic late 70s style, just-pre-dancehall-era roots music with tough horns, heavy basslines and powerful vocals to rank alongside anything from Lee Perry, Bunny Lee or Yabby You of the same period. Lyrically it's a mixture of some deeply dread reality reasoning and the slightly strange and random, with first class DJing by Welton Irie adding commentary both deep and humorous which riffs on the original vocals, snippets of which are preserved throughout the dub tracks that he toasts over, making this one IMO one of Blood & Fire's most solid releases.

The opening cut "Give Thanks & Praise" on the Dirty Harry riddim is oddly cut short at only 2 min 11, but Welton's version "Rolling Stone" is full single length, and emphasises the heavy heavy "Dirty Harry" bassline. "Lamb's Bread" is a righteous herb defence tune, with Welton continuing the theme telling of the "little dread by the name of Fred", ghetto reality tale of imprisonment for selling herb. There follow 4 cuts on the truly mighty "Cleanliness Is Godliness" riddim, a crazy, supercharged steppers with an irresistibly catchy horn riff - simultaneously as wacky as anything from the Ark and as apocalyptically heavy as anything from Yabby You - the former aspect being emphasised on the frankly odd "Cleanliness Is Godliness" itself (with Sylford singing about "bits of paper littering the ground", altho i guess you could work it vaguely into the environmental reasoning of several tracks on this album) and the mildly slack "Stone A Throw", and the latter on the magnificently dread "Babylonians" and "Jah Come", the latter with some of the dreadest lines of any Dj tune: "If New York should get a tidal wave/slave master would haffi let go every slave/and then we woulda know the good, the bad and the brave/and all grave digger woulda dig a lot a grave/say many are called but few chosen/cah some a dem a wolf in a sheep clothing" (shades of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina)... "can't go to Zion with your carnal mind/your carnal mind you better leave that behind/can't go to Zion in a Land Rover/it a go lick and turn over"... straight to the American head!

"My Father's Home Land" is a typical, mellow repatriation tune, while the well known club steppers anthem "Deuteronomy" is a slightly odd recitation of books of the Old Testament, with its DJ version "Black Man Get Up Tan Up Pon Foot" another call to arms for repatriation. "Eternal Day" is another judgement lyric on a more downtempo riddim ("Forward The Good"), but the closing pair of tunes on the "Slaving" riddim, "Chant Down Babylon" and "Ghetto Man Corner" are the set's other true high point, with Sylford invoking the creative/destructive power of music-as-gnosis to literally knock down the walls of oppression and Welton again providing hardcore lyrical reasoning, effortlessly fusing testimony of ghetto living with environmental critique: "Long time I an I down here a suffer/cause in this land of wood and water/all I see is car and manslaughter/so nice up the ghettoman corner"... another blazing tune to match the likes of Yabby You's "King Pharoah's Plague" for both bass and horn musical power and social-ecologist lyrical eschatology...

All in all this is one of the heaviest late roots period albums out there, and enhanced immeasurably by the addition of the perfectly complementary DJ cuts to 6 of its original 8 tracks and the extended versions of the other 2, weighing in at over an hour of crucial music. No lover of bass-heavy, politically conscious late 70s roots should be without this... to quote the title track, "Dis ya one yah never do no one no wrong!"