Reggae & Dancehall Used Vinyl 113 Items

Vinyl with a couple of light scuffs, close to VG+. Original inner sleeve with seam splits. Cover with bumped corner, closer to NM

2015 reissue.

Still in shrink but opened with hype sticker. With insert and DVD.

Still in shrink but opened with hype sticker. Pink vinyl. Limited edition. Tiny wear.

Vinyl with a couple of light scuffs

Clear vinyl seems unlayed. Hole in back cover. With stickers.

Still sealed

Includes booklet.

Record is close to NM!

Still sealed Limited edition.

Still sealed. Dark Green vinyl Limited edition.

Soul Jazz Records are releasing this first ever collection of the pioneering British reggae Lovers Rock group Brown Sugar including rare singles, dubs and extended mixes. The album comes with extensive sleevenotes and interviews with Dennis Bovell, Pauline Catlin, John Kpiaye and Winston Edwards (Studio 16).
Brown Sugar were formed by three young teenage girls – Pauline Catlin, Caron Wheeler and Carol Simms in South London in 1976. In the short period of time 1976-1980, the group – working with Dennis Bovell on the mixing desk and John Kpiaye (‘Brownie T) in the studio – recorded barely a handful of singles on the new Lovers Rock label, a number of which went to the top of the UK reggae charts. But success stopped there, and with no album release and no industry support the group broke up in the early 1980s.
Following their split Caron Wheeler became the lead vocalist for the hugely successful group Soul II Soul, Carol Simms launched a solo career as Kofi (re-making a number of Brown Sugar songs with producer Mad Professor) and Pauline Catlin returned to education.
Despite their relatively low-key mainstream public exposure Brown Sugar (and the label on which their first records appeared) announced to the world a new genre of reggae music, Lovers Rock, which spoke for the first time with the sensibility of a new segment of British society; that of first generation-born Black British female youth.
And while Lovers Rock became synonymous with sweet love songs, Brown Sugar’s music in fact expressed far more; a righteous pride and consciousness in being Black and British, a political stance more often associated with UK roots groups like Black Slate, Aswad, Misty in Roots and other British reggae acts in the late 1970s. Brown Sugar were in fact their own genre of ‘conscious lovers rock’ – an expression of ideological black cultural pride.
Brown Sugar’s handful of three-minute love songs (often plus extended dubs) somehow manage to encapsulate all the complexities of identity, sexual politics and youthful righteousness of Afro-Caribbean youth living in Britain in the 1970s. Songs such as ‘I’m in Love with A Dreadlocks’, ‘Our Reggae Music’, ‘Black Pride’ and ‘Dreaming of Zion’ spoke with a straightforward righteousness and consciousness that few roots groups could hope to match. The fact that they were all teenagers is even more striking.
In the mid-70s British reggae came into being as first generation Black Britain was able to find a voice able to express the issues of growing up British with Caribbean roots. This came about in two different ways – the British roots music of (essentially male) groups such as Aswad, Steel Pulse and Black Slate – and Lovers Rock, the expression of a black essentially (but not totally) female consciousness – Brown Sugar, Louisa Mark, 15-16-17, Marie Pierre, Janet Kay, Carroll Thompson, Jean Adebambo and others. And significantly, while British roots music was a variant on a Jamaican style, Lovers Rock was uniquely British – the first authentic British reggae sound.
Dennis Bovell comments, “For Lovers Rock we needed a pulpit, a way of saying ‘this is the style’. Sound systems were already saying ‘this is lovers,’ brandishing it in the dance. Our intention was to create a style of music that my generation could identify with – one that had a beat, and you could dance to with your partner in a sound system setting.”
Dennis Bovell’s mixes for the group gave a further dimension to Brown Sugar records – a sound system mentality, adding sound effects and dub elements. ‘I’m in Love with A Dreadlocks’ was the debut release for both Brown Sugar and the Lovers Rock label, a fitting calling card for both. The record was a hit on many sound systems across the UK, reaching the top of the reggae charts.
John Kpiaye: “They never put out an album. And all these records were seven-inch singles; when 12-inches turned up it just killed the seven-inch.”
Although the career of Brown Sugar was short-lived, their legacy and influence remains significant and now, 40 years on from these first records, all of the members are still involved in music. Pauline Catlin has recently re-launched her career under a new moniker, Shezekiel; Carol Simms, aka Kofi, remains a successful solo artist, one of the queens of Lovers Rock; Caron Wheeler, after leaving Soul II Soul at the end of the 1980s, embarked on a solo career, before re-joining the soul super-group which she continues to front to this day.
This new collection brings together all the groups essential recordings for the first ever time.

Still sealed. Light Blue Limited edition.

Still sealed.

Still in shrink but opened with hype sticker. Red vinyl seems unplayed. PVC sleeve. Original inner sleeves. With DVD.

Red vinyl

Sealed, but cover has ring wear.

2022 Reissue | Green vinyl

180 Gram Vinyl Following the success of the 2021 reissue of Ambient Warrior’s cult classic Dub Journey's (1995), Isle of Jura is pleased to present their unreleased second album, II. Born from the same oceanside fusion of instrumental dub, reggae, bossa nova and tango music that made Dub Journey's so distinctive and memorable, II is an equally sublime collection of eleven unheard tracks from the brilliant minds of Ronnie Lion and Andrea Terrano.

Evoking the delights of white sands, palm trees and sunsets, all set against clear waters and endless blue skies, Dub Journey’s and II document the golden moment when Ambient Warrior came together during the mid-90s to create some of the most Balearic Dub ever made. “Music is the greatest traveler, isn’t it?” says Ronnie. “It gets to places the actual artists can’t even get to really.”

The son of an orphaned Jamaican jazz trumpet player and professional boxer who enlisted in the military after stowing away on a boat to London, Ronnie grew up between Germany, Singapore and the UK before becoming a working musician in his mid-teens. A bass player by trade, he honed his skills playing in a series of soul, jazz-funk, blues, rock and reggae bands that performed throughout the UK.

By the time Ambient Warrior released Dub Journey’s, Ronnie and his business partner Ras Joseph were running the Lion Inc. recording studio and record label in Brixton, London. Having set up distribution arrangements with Roots Records (uk) and Semaphore (deu/nl), they recorded and released a series of singles, compilations and solo albums from a who’s who of roots reggae artists, including Twinkle Brothers, Delroy Washington, Michael Prophet, Alton Ellis, Little Roy, and Ronnie’s own band The Amharic. “Lion was a regular port of call for visiting Jamaican artists,” reflects Ronnie. “When you were in London, it was on the route.”

An accomplished guitarist, producer and recording engineer from Trieste, Italy, Andrea grew up listening to Russian folk, Klezmer and the Italian harmony tradition in a Sicilian-Ukrainian family. After completing compulsory Italian military service, he moved to London to continue studying music. One night, he turned up at Lion Inc. and approached them about running audio engineering classes from the studio.

In Andrea, Ronnie found a collaborator who shared his desire to create borderless music that reflected the diversity of their backgrounds. “I wanted to do something that had no boundaries,” Ronnie explains. “If you’re working on a roots album, it has to sound a certain way, but with Ambient, especially in the nineties, it was just a license to let off. You could do whatever you wanted to do.” “It was a melting pot of influences like London itself,” adds Andrea.

Although they wrote most of II at the same time as they were recording Dub Journey’s, it took them several years to finish off the album. “Things never got done quickly,” Ronnie remembers. By the time it was complete, Roots Records had gone out of business, leaving Lion Inc. without UK distribution. Not long after, their Brixton studio flooded, bringing the label to a close.

These days, Andrea continues to work as a session guitarist, recording engineer and producer in London. Over the last two decades, he has collaborated regularly with Basement Jaxx and released several solo albums. Ronnie, on the other hand, lives on a boat equipped with an onboard studio, where he has recorded a series of oceanic dub albums off the British coast. Twenty-eight years after the release of Dub Journey’s, he recently started working on demos for a third Ambient Warrior album he hopes to record with Andrea in the not-so-distant future.

Artwork By Bradley Pinkerton.

Orange vinyl

Orange vinyl!

Silver vinyl. Without bonus 7".

Vinyl close to NM

Red vinyl

Grey vinyl!

Record is still sealed, but cover has ring wear.

Orange vinyl Limited edition. Numbered. Tiny corner wear.

Record is close to NM.

Sealed copy.
Cover corners slightly dented.

Green Vinyl.
Record is close to NM.
Includes original insert.

Orchid/Tangerine coloured vinyl and cover are very close to NM. Limited edition. Original inner sleeve.

Record Store Day 2021 Release.
Limitation: 1000 copies.
Still shrink wrapped but opened.
Record is close to near mint.

Vinyl is close to NM. With insert.

Cover with bumped corners

Still sealed, but cover has ring wear.

Orange vinyl seems unplayed. Cover has beginning seam split. Limited edition numbered.

cd and box are close to NM. with booklet

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

Record is close to NM.

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

Record is close to NM.

small tear on cover. Vinyl seems unplayed.