MARCH 2024 ISSUE

Dee Cover

MARCH 2024 ISSUE

 

A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the March 2024 issue – OUT NOW!

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DEE C. LEE

Tempus certainly fugits.
The last time I ran into Dee C. Lee was in IKEA, Croydon back in the very early nineties, when she and [then] husband Paul Weller were queuing up at the very same checkout my [also then] partner and I had coincidentally walked up to. Happily, she remembered me from a recent interview, so I didn’t feel like a total idiot when saying hello. Since that time, of course, the former Wham! background singer, prominent member of Style Council and later solo star in her own right has been absent from the music scene, choosing instead to bring up her two children away from the noise their parents’ fame would surely have attracted. Nathaniel and Leah are both in their 30s now – the former lives in LA, the latter also a music artist in her own right – and, as it turned out, it was another chance encounter, this time with renowned DJ and Acid Jazz Records honcho Eddie Piller, that has this spring returned Dee to the spotlight.
The seeds of her comeback project – the album Just Something is released March 22 by Acid Jazz – were sown back in 2019 when Style Council reformed for a somewhat emotional one-song reunion to close the 2020 Sky Arts documentary Long Hot Summers – The Story Of The Style Council. Afterwards Dee bumped into said Mr. Piller, who remarked how much he’d missed hearing her voice

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DUKES OF ROOTS

“Feel it, feel the love surrounding you. Feel the love, just let it in.”
Dukes of Roots’ latest single, Feel The Love Remix, has a cameo appearance from Kabaka Pyramid and looks set to be a staple on reggae playlists everywhere this spring and summer. It’s one of those joyous, life-affirming tracks that have become synonymous with classic reggae hits over the years, and this same, all-inclusive approach can be heard throughout the band’s debut album, Dukes of Roots, which features guest artists like Stephen Marley, Andrew Tosh, Darius Rucker, and Tarrus Riley, among others.
The first that many of us heard from Dukes of Roots was a powerful, uplifting cover of Toots & The Maytals’ Pressure Dropthat couldn’t have been timelier, since it appeared in late 2021, during the aftermath of the Covid lockdown… What made their version stand out was the quality of the actual production, the musicianship and Mermans Mosengo’s lead vocals [which remind me a little of Bunny Rugs].

 

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ROMAIN VIRGO

There’s no need to ask why Romain Virgo’s latest album is called The Gentleman: the 34-year-old Jamaican singer is all that being a gentleman entails. He’s courteous, polite and well-mannered, is respectful towards women and remains self-effacing, despite having acquired considerable fame since becoming the youngest ever winner of Digicel’s Rising Stars competition in 2007.
Rising Stars is the equivalent of X Factor in the UK, and it’s by no means certain that winners will go on to enjoy successful careers in music. Romain has proved an exception, and The Gentleman is his fourth album release, following on from his debut Romain Virgo, 2012’s The System and then Lovesick, which topped the Billboard charts in 2018. He’s released a number of singles and EPs in-between, but the new album has been six long years in the making and would have come out sooner, were it not for the pandemic.
“We’d been recording before Covid,” he says via WhatsApp. “We had been in the studio working on songs and I would say that the pandemic allowed me to tap into a deeper side of myself, and that included all of the growth over the years – especially since the last album. It would include becoming a father and a husband, and just everything that comes with life itself.

 

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SHABAKA HUTCHINGS

In 1959, Sonny Rollins shocked the jazz world by withdrawing from all public appearances and recording sessions. The saxophone colossus was at the height of his fame but decided he needed to take time out to hone his craft rather than do the endless round of gigs that audiences and promoters were demanding. He spent days practising under the Williamsburg Bridge in New York. The story remains topical.
“Obviously, I’m not doing exactly the same thing, but his decision is something that actually made me think or understand,” says Shabaka Hutchings carefully. “I was thinking about what it must have been, in reality, for him to do that. It made me think that there is a precedent of musicians going, ‘I’m not just going to follow the obvious path suggested by the industry structure that I’m a part of’. There’s got to be a personal aspect. And that often involves stepping back from the limelight.”

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