Various: Impact!

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * *)

This is a consistent and sometimes humorous collection of late 60s/early 70s reggae singles out of Randy's Record Shop in Kingston (and the Chin family's tie-in record labels) which includes name players Augustus Pablo, Tommy McCook and Jackie Mittoo but equally elevates little-knowns like Charley Ace and Randy's All Stars (on Guns in the Ghetto) into this illustrious company.

Like early reggae and ska sides there's a subtle debt in many tracks to US popular music (by this time funk and soul, rather than the r'n'b beaming in from New Orleans).

So here is a reggae inversion of Peter Green/Santana's Black Magic Woman (by Winston "King" Cole), Mittoo's 30-6-90 comes off like a mishearing of some Jimmy Smith organ funk (with biscuit-tin drums), Skin, Flesh and Bones' richly textured and bluesy Do It Till You're Satisfied sounds suspiciously like a fully functional template for Marley's Could You Be Loved, and there's an early version of Be Thankful by Donovan Carless (which Tony Bryan covered for Massive Attack's Blue Lines).

Much diversity, some amusements (Ace's impenetrable spliff-suckin' dialogue on Country Boy), ghetto testifying and even MOR organ-reggae courtesy of Mittoo's Soul and Inspiration. This is the good oil.

Label: Soul Jazz/Chant