- Label: 'Property Of The Lost Records'
- Genre: 'Reggae'
- Release Date: '10.8.26.'- Catalogue No: 'LOST076'
Our Rating:
The Return Of King Zepha has come skanking from back a yard in Leeds to bring soulful reggae and ska vibes to us all. King Zepha are Sam Thornton, Adam Richards, Saphire Browne, Georgia Jakubiak, Chris Lloyd, B Dubbs, Will Blankley, Will Osborne, Chris Williamson, Daniel Webster and Richard Ormrod. Produced & engineered by King Zepha in Leeds and mixed & mastered by Ross Halden at Hohm Studio in Bradford. Like all good Reggae acts they steal and re-purpose classic riddims to their own ends in cool and interesting ways.
The album opens with the summer skanking sounds of Humility, with heavy brass and organ, leading us back towards Treasure Isle and Sonia Pottinger style productions, but with a modern ska twist or two, before they make clear you will reap what you sow.
Let's Get This One Thing Right we all need upbeat ska and reggae in our lives, the horns accent the lyrics nicely, telling us that King Zepha will be your healer, with his own I-Three style backing singers, a cool jazzy sax solo helping to keep this on a lovers rock vibe.
Lament mixes the cool organ sounds and brass section with some classic 70's style dub effects, for this Lament about the inequity of our political systems, how they always fail to share things fairly, in totally righteous ways they take aim at the 1% thieving from the rest of us.
You And Me has a cool duppy intro with funky guitar and sax trying to get us all jumping, dancing and having fun together, finding the chemistry you find you share together on that dancefloor making clear, all those racists haven't a clue what fun we all have together when we put hate aside.
Prez I hope is in praise of the real, one and only Prez Lester Young, with some very cafe jazz keyboards and familiar loping brass beats, perfect for skanking across the room too, drinking that rum they tell us to drink, while have fun with while trying not to compare them to Lou Bega because Monica would not be pleased.
I Can't Take It his baby wants to rock all night and he ain't up to it, better give him some Viagra, even if it won't cure his skankers knees, you will indeed have a knees up dancing to this tune.
Distorted Horizons has a sort of Randy's dub, feel but with more horns, this lopes wonderfully, isn't afraid of the effects box and super tight brass section. Perfect for making the room go smoky again.
I Wouldn't Change Things and won't apologise for how he's led his life, what he got up too and what led him to where he is now, I'll second that emotion, hearing about youthful mistakes and romances gone astray, back when he was a lover man skanking all over town. Meditation is in the classical musical sense of musical meditations to chill the place out.
Arabesque works around a wonderful classic Arabic melody, but with dub percussion breaks, those whooshing effects the sax plays off of. Come Back To Bed is a classic call for some morning delights having a lay in, before Skanking time at 10 am, always good to hear a shout or two of How You Mean before they make sure to put a smile pon your face with all those loved up vibes, g'wan Come Back to Bed with them.
The album closes with a cover of I'm A Brass Band the Sammy Davis Jnr classic, while shouting out to some of my favourite reggae musicians, gotta love a Lester Sterling name check, so let that music flow out of your speakers and get down with King Zepha.
Find Out more at https://kingzepha.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of-king-zepha https://www.facebook.com/kingzepha
