If you’ve been checking for Fruits Records since they launched in 2015, you already know they have a knack for pushing out roots music that feels real. They mix fresh European talent with great Jamaican voices like I Kong, Cornell Campbell, Oku Onuora, The Viceroys, Kumar, and more. It’s a label with its feet planted firmly in the culture.
After putting out both vocal albums and instrumental sets, they’re now diving into a full dub series. And that makes perfect sense. Fruits Records has always carried that golden-era Jamaican energy, so flipping their own catalogue into dub versions feels like a return to the source. Different engineers will get their turn at the controls, working with tunes played by the in-house band, The 18th Parallel.
Dub Avalanche Vol. 1 brings them back into orbit with Spanish master engineer Roberto Sánchez. The man’s been shaping heavyweight roots and dub for years inside his A-Lone Ark Muzik Studio, and you can hear every bit of that experience on this project. He got ten cuts to remix – some known, some fresh off the shelf – and he tears into them with real imagination.
Five tracks are full-on instrumental dub journeys with The 18th Parallel in deep space mode. The other five let familiar voices echo through the swirl: The Viceroys, Lone Ranger, Dennis Walks, Cornell Campbell. The opener, North Face, sets the entire mood right away. It hits like a warning siren: this album isn’t here to play nice. Tracks like Serious Matter, Black Sun, Sleep Gully, Pothole Invasion, and Stars Above, lock you in tight.
If this first volume is anything to go by, the Dub Avalanche series is going to be something special. And if you’re a avid dub head, this one’s already essential.