Vin Gordon

★★★★ African Shores TRADITION. CD/DL/LP Second quality release on Nat Birchall’s contemporary dread label. If you only owned records featuring Vin Gordon, you’d still have one of the greatest reggae collections of all time. Starting out with The Skatalites in 1964, Gordon, AKA Don Drummond Jr, became Studio One’s main trombonist, playing with everyone from Prince Far I and The Mighty Diamonds to Burning Spear, and Bob Marley. Last year, Gordon recorded the sweet an’ dandy Sounds Almighty with Lancashire’s own spiritual saxophonist Nat Birchall in Al Breadwinner’s Manchester studio. Now he’s returned, “old school style”, cutting all his ’bone melodies live and on the spot, to Breadwinner’s dub rhythms. Interacting with Birchall’s sax and piano colourings, Vin summons up deep, rippling horn lines that work like time-travel wormholes, swooshing dub passageways that spirit the blissed-out listener between a shining Studio One past and a Northern urban present. Andrew Male