Classic Album: Steel Pulse,
Island Records, 1978
Handsworth Revolution
Exactly 40 years ago the founding fathers of UK bass culture were in Bob Marley’s studio watching an engineer kick a spring echo. It may have raised a chuckle, through a cloud of smoke, but the sound was no joke. This was dub science – a relatively new dark art of studio sound manipulation that gave body, weight, timelessness, pressure and power to your sound.
Steel Pulse, a group of super tight musicians from Birmingham, were recording their debut album, Handsworth Revolution. Holed up in Island Records’ London studio (nicknamed “The Fallout Shelter”), surrounded by gear left over from Marley’s sessions, the young posse set to work with something to prove. They were at the end of a cycle – generally, reggae was considered over. And British reggae? C’mon. The only other band on the radar at the time was Aswad, and they were signed to the same label, so what chance did Steel Pulse have?
“We didn’t fit in at the time,” says founding member, Mykaell Riley, who, along with lead vocalist David Hinds, guitarists Selwyn Brown and Basil Gabbidon, bassist, Ronnie McQueen, drummer Steve Nisbett, and percussionist Alphonso Martin, made up the group. “Nobody thought it was authentic reggae, no-one cared about anyone outside London, and our main competition was on Island Records! We knew we had to make our identity – around the music, lyrics, performance, and production – reflect Britishness.”
This was a time of dub architecture in the UK that we take for granted now. Where once ungainly pipes and plates made mesmerising reverbs and echoes, now sits a plugin. But this was the era of experimentation, with pioneers like Steel Pulse getting in the trenches and earning their stripes, and founding a great deal of the sonic language that runs through the story of British music today.
Handsworth Revolution would go on to be regarded as the greatest reggae album ever by a UK act, and one of the first on these shores to take the Jamaican sound and put it through the British ringer: a practice countless musicians would continue, right up to grime and dubstep. Here’s that album’s story. Lest we forget.