At a slow pace, Nightmares On Wax’ IN A SPACE OUTTA SOUND has become a real giant. There aren’t that many albums that can be said to have this quality, but this certainly applies to the record by the Briton George Evelyn, 20 years after its first release. Evelyn had played us a hymn to the reggae sound system culture that he was able to experience so intensively as a teenager in Leeds in the eighties. The titles of some of the tracks may have been forgotten, but their sound penetrated time and context, reaching dance floors and sofas alike, and has long been a tower in the habitat of British black music.
Evelyn had already dedicated the 2025 mixtape ECHO45 SOUND SYSTEM to reggae, now he is revealing his original approach to the space sound original on two albums and has it remixed by Adrian Sherwood on the third. It was the soul and hip-hop notes with which Evelyn so organically enriched his tracks, always tidy, always downtempo, so that we could better listen to the music as it grew and flourished, as it rocked back and forth in a finely organized manner.
There were chic, eccentric updates of an old-school dancehall sound that was about to be turned into a museum (“Flip Ya Lid”), transformations of funk motifs and airy breakbeat ravings. At Evelyn’s invitation, Sherwood tailored ambitious variations, sometimes excursions, and he also recorded overdubs with On-U-Sound musicians (including bassist Doug Wimbish). The classic and its new clothes are presented in a 3-LP glow-in-the-dark box and other combined packages; the Sherwood remixes are also available as independent recordings in various formats.
