Select Cuts from Blood and Fire Chapter Three

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I don't know how intentional it is but the cover of this has three coloured stripes running across it like a flag: red, gold and...black. Instead of the expected African green we get a German black, somewhat cutely underlining the German-based label's contemporary takes on classic 70's reggae and dub tunes. From the classic Basic Channel and Chain Reaction sound to Pole's underwater exit grooves right up to Meteosound's confusingly similarly titled "Select Cuts" compilation (recently reviewed here), dub has become a key sound in German music.

This reflection is only tangential, however, seeing that practically none of the artists here are actually German, and neither is the sound. Whereas the Meteosound record, for example, favoured a very German exploration of surfaces, of the similarities between surface noise and hard drive glitch and a contrast between the digital and analogue qualities of echo, space and delay, this "Select Cuts" leaves such cerebral matters behind and heads straight for the dancefloor.

Kicking off with Groove Corporation's stomping take on Big Youth's "Waterhouse Rock" and not stopping until an unusually upbeat Fila Brazilia take on the entire Blood & Fire catalogue in a five minute pile-up fourteen tracks later, this compilation may occasionally sound a little dated but derives an enormous strength from the fact that while others may become fascinated by the surfaces of dub, here the remixers have gone back to the substance, the original motherlode, the source material which is, fortunately, some of the finest music ever recorded. You don't go wrong with it, whatever you do. It's as simple as that.

At a first listening, for example, you might find yourself wondering why Dan Donovan has taken Prince Allah's delicate, shimmering "Great Stone" and driven a huge great truck across it until it crashes into Pablo Moses' "One People", only to then surrender to the huge bass and stomping velocity of the thing. It sounds fantastic and would fill any floor you cared to broadcast it too. Black Star Liner are a little gentler with Horace Andy's "Do You Love My Music?", adding a hint of an echoing tabla bouncing back and forth across the speakers in the distance with a hint of the original vocal intoning "music...music.." to make something that has both the hypnotic and booty shaking qualities of the finest dub. The Disciples strip Big Youth's "Chucky No Lucky" down to its barest, most minimal essentials until little is left of it but a distant bass and the occasional twang, making clear some of the connections between the original stuff and the Basic Channel minimal electronica, but the exercise here is little more than academic.

Small Axe perform what is probably the most technically accomplished mix here, treating their source material (Big Youth again) as collage, cutting it up and pasting it back together again with the constant accumulation of tiny details so the piece builds and builds until a vertiginous final minute, work reminiscent of Coldcut at their finest.

What "Select Cuts 3" eventually does then, is send you either back to your shelves to dig out the originals, or go to a record shop to find them for the first time. This, of course, is an excellent thing.