Exclusively

The second LP to come from the collaboration between Horace Andy and producer Lloyd “Bullwackie” Barnes is less intense than its predecessor but just as spellbinding. “Good Will to Survive” even sounds slightly poppy, although the meandering synthesizer is a reminder that it’s far more than a happy-go-lucky reggae session. Bullwackie was an expert at recording Andy’s ghostly voice, one of the most intangible instruments in modern music. In “Eating Mess,” it\'s captured with such intimacy that it seems like Andy is whispering in the listener’s ear; yet the vocal has a detached quality that makes it sound like it’s hovering in the air around the speakers. At times the productions recall the esteemed work Lee Perry did at his Black Ark studio. But where Perry’s music sometimes appeared rambling and indulgent, Bullwackie and Andy made songs that are frighteningly precise. They were expatriates struggling in snowy New York, and while all of the recordings imply displacement, suspicion, and loneliness, those qualities become overt on the haunting “Live in the City.”

Horace Andy's Exclusively features the beautiful voice of the great Mr. Andy, recorded in 1983, at the same session that produced what some feel is his best album, Dance Hall Style.