The Archive
DENNIS BOVELL
“Makes no difference if you change my name/In my heart I’ll remain the same”
Deep cuts from the decorated dub DJ, reggae guitarist and record producer. By Louis Pattison
SYD SHELTON
Sufferer Sounds DISCIPLES
JANUARY 2025
TAKE 334
1 LAURIE STYVERS (P46) 2 INDIE POP 1980–89 (P48) 3 TERRY RILEY (P50) 4 AGARTHA (P52)
REISSUES | COMPS | BOXSETS | LOST RECORDINGS
Dennis Bovell: blending the rough with the smooth
HE went by many names. Blackbeard. The Dub Band. African Stone. The 4th Street Orchestra. Dennis Matumbi. Today, though, they simply call him Dennis Bovell MBE.
Bovell was one of the central figures in the great flowering of homegrown UK reggae in the 1970s and ’80s, and surely the most adaptable. A multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, sound system selector, chart hitmaker, architect of lovers rock, and an in-demand producer for everyone from dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson to post-punk groups like The Pop Group and The Slits – Bovell did it all and has the box of dusty dubplates to prove it.
Despite remix work for the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Animal Collective and The Smile, you could convincingly argue that Bovell hasn’t received the full recognition he deserves. Blame that rash of pseudonyms, perhaps – or that many of his productions probably got cut to acetate, played out at a dance and then filed away, their destiny having been realised. Well, if Bovell has been in any way overlooked, Sufferer Sounds is a major step to redress that balance.