Ease Off by Tony Roots

Tony Roots was introduced to me by Barry Issac in 1998. I used to hire Conscious Sounds every Thursday at that time and Barry was there every Wednesday. I’d known Barry for years through music runnings as we used to help each other by selling each others tunes to people we knew. In the course of our activities Barry would sometimes call in during one of my recording sessions or I’d check him during one of his. I knew about Tony Roots though at that time he was just starting to make a name for himself, working with Barry and also Roots Hitek who was just starting off in production then. Barry had released a single with him called Hola Zion which a lot of sounds were playing plus a showcase album called Not Far Away, both for Reggae On Top label. Barry told me that Tony wanted to link with me and do some works, and I was open to the idea so we met up one day and had a talk. Tony is originally from Jamaica but he had a good understanding of what we were doing in London, and I liked his voice. I gave him a few riddims to take away and see which ones he felt he could work with.
One of the riddims was a one drop style version of Swell Headed, originally produced at Studio One with Burning Spear on vocal and later versioned by Freddie McGregor and other singers. It had long been a favourite of mine, especially the little known cut Reggae Mr Operator by Pablo Roots which was a regular play on Jah Warrior sound. Tony liked the riddim and chose it as one of the ones to voice so we arranged a day at the studio and Ease Off was the result. It came out on 7 inch in early 1999 and was well received, especially the heavyweight dub on the B side mixed as usual by Dougie.
The vinyl is no longer in stock but it’s available for download at Bandcamp.

Recorded at Conscious Sounds, produced by Jah Warrior. Released on 7 inch in 1999

Tracklist

1.	Ease Off	3:50

2.	Jah Warrior - Dub Off	3:45

Credits

released February 20, 1999

Drums: A Millgate
Bass, Keyboards: Steve Mosco

License