Caliban

Music From Memory and Jackson “Tapes” Bailey present a long-lost nugg of reggae soul and disco from early ‘80s London courtesy of Milton Myrie aka Caliban, a session guitarist who played on Steel & Skin’s joyous Afro Punk Reggae and for cult UK buddhist afro reggae band Ozo.

Myrie’s sole, self-produced release as Caliban, Open Mind / Digital Reggae was issued on 7” in 1984 but, as Jackson Bailey would find out when he tracked down and met Myrie, much of the original pressing remained unsold and still in his possession, along with a healthy stack of unreleased material which is previewed on this 12”, ahead of a broader compilation due later in the summer.

Digital Reggae opens the set with its breezy blend of yacht rock-friendly guitar frills and crisp metallic tang softened off by Myrie’s mellow, spirited vocal, urging the NASA that “Digital reggae will be included in the Payload of Skylab!”.

On the remix, Tapes offers a firmer take on the same elements, tuffening up the bass and slicing the vocals into curt bursts on a trampoline of studio FX, before the B-side’s Supernatural dispenses a cooled out stripe of reggae disco riding on spacey organ vamps and juicy bass work.