Dancehall & Patois Vol. 1 – Arstream (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

You could argue that everything you need to know about this album is in the title. But as this is a music review, I suspect you’ll want a bit more than that. If Dancehall, as a style, emerged as Reggae’s more stripped-back, faster, and often more dynamic younger sibling in the seventies, Dancehall & Patois Vol. 1 is the sound of where that genre is today.

All sounds evolve, and even as technology and fashion change the nature of a genre over time, the art is to ensure that the core tenets of that sound remain in place. And so if Arstream‘s nine killer tracks certainly sit at the cutting edge of the Dancehall sound, everything that made it such a potent sonic force in the first place is still found driving the music.

The short opener, suitably titled “Intro – Yuh Ready,” is less a first track, more a mission statement, explaining what is about to happen, a trippy blend of the characteristic off-beat groove and an almost classic violin dancing across the top. “Devil Dance” is where the album really kicks into gear, with infectious, incendiary beats, machine-gun salvoes of lyrics that sit between toasting and rapping, English and Jamaican patois, Caribbean traditions, and forward-thinking creativity.

“Forget Bout Di Rest” reminds us how close the modern Dancehall sound is to the cutting edge of clubland groove. Still, as the name suggests, it has always been music designed to keep the dancefloor packed and punching above its weight, hot and sweaty —a groove-ritual to joy and total abandonment… at least for a few hours.

And if “Queen Majesty” isn’t the most infectious thing you have heard in a long while, all sultry rhythms, sweet, often searing vocals, that blend of Latin groove, Island vibes, and African spirit that makes such music so potent, then you might need to check your pulse for signs of life.

“Concrete Jungle” pushes into some less expected territory, somehow both dark yet delicious, intense but infectious —an anthemic reggae groove meets a dance-noir sonic palette… if you can imagine such a thing.

Dancehall & Patois Vol. 1 is a glorious affair, not only a collection of great songs, ones built on accessibility and contagion, via the sound of reggae traditions wrapped in clubland sounds, a blend of analogue creativity and digital deftness, but also a brilliant document of just how this musical path has moved forward and where we find it today.