Forgotten Treasure: Willie Lindo “Far & Distant” (1974)

A legendary session guitarist as well as producer for such greats as Beres Hammond and Maxi Priest, Willie Lindo is much too bright a gemstone to be left uncovered.

I stumbled onto him on one of my YouTube-digging runs with the homie 80rock when we discovered Midnight, a sumptuous piece of gourmet music. Its sheer brilliance moved me: timeless dub, executed to perfection. After trolling about on eBay, I was lucky enough to find his album on wax. The B-Side sees Lindo cover Al Green and Bobby Womack, converting their slow jams into stoney instrumental masterpieces, a sort of precursor to the hiphop way of sampling and reinterpreting our collective heritage.

Fun factoid: Far & Distant was recorded at 220 Marcus Garvey Drive, eight years prior to Rita Marley relocating Tuff Gong International to that address. A relic from an era where being “in the studio” actually meant something, beyond the vapid Twitter broadcasts from would-be artists who swear they’re “on the grind”.

Reissue notes from Dub Store Records: Celebrated session guitarist, Willie Lindo, steps from behind the scenes and into the spotlight to deliver some top class original compositions and sublime cover versions.

Dub Store Records is the Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae and Dancehall reissue label run by the eponymous Tokyo based record store. The label aims at accurately covering the 50-plus years of Jamaican music, and pass on many rare and magnificent recordings, which are non-commercial and highly artistic. Carefully handing down the tradition of reggae music, Dub Store Records has so far issued recordings from labels and artists such as Studio One, Federal Records (Federal, Kentone, Merritone), Jammys, Bunny Wailer’s Solomonic, Derrick Harriott, Kiddus I, Redman International, King Tubby’s Firehouse, Fam’s, BMN and much more to come.

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Rapper, producer, autodidact. Editor at Mook Life, host of Artbeat Montreal. HAARYOU!