The Twinkle Brothers
Countrymen

Let's clear up one point right away: dub is pure psychedelia.

Dub or, as in this case, almost dub reggae...those refracting sounds (and suspended... and elongated...), oh those sounds, those fabulous sounds create a super reality and perhaps (perhaps perhaps perhaps) another dimension. So more psychedelic than this...

Let’s clear up another point: those sounds are pure, no, purest, musical therapy and perhaps (perhaps perhaps perhaps) the perfect note those certain kraut rockers were rambling about in the seventies, primarily that guy from Ash Ra Tempel... And they are for the same reason mentioned in point one.

If then to those sounds, very modern and at the same time ancestral, you add other ancestry, namely a singing style that is pure Africa (like wild and perfect vocal harmonies, or perfect and wild, you choose), then we are truly on the path of the shamans... and even further on zero shamanic path.

If you want proof, take this record and go to track three, "Never Get Burns," and you will find all this stuff I've mentioned... or rather, you will probably find even more... believe it or not, I can even hear the Talking Heads' "Remain in Light," but in this case, maybe I'm just a bit out there...

But in this album, there isn't just super esoteric and almost dub reggae... oh no... what about, for example "I Don’t Wanna Be Lonely Anymore," the magnificent track one?

Should I try to say something? Should I not? Okay, I’ll try... what kind of percussion can have a sound like this, like angelic urban drums that, elemental and ruthless, break into four?

And that solid R&B/soul? And those warm and very soft voices that seem to come from the dawn of time?

Then again, take it all with a grain of salt, especially that story about the angelic drums, because what I wrote is just a desperate attempt to define something indefinable... maybe, to adjust the aim a little, replace angelic with luminous... or, also due to what you'll read below, replace it with sparkling...

Then about breaking into four, few doubts... but they break into... into... into... something beautiful... ecstasy or something like that... and anyway...

And anyway, damn... damn... damn... but really damn... in the sense of how do you do that? And how could you, dear simpletons, have done without until now??? Assuming that, wiser than me, you haven’t been without it at all...

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Brothers means fratelli and twinkle means scintillio...

It was "So my say," an old rasta, who came up with that name watching those two kids singing while looking at the stars and who had built their own instruments using "tin, pieces of board, and fishing lines"...

Then again, in Jamaica, making your own instruments was pretty normal... who was that rocksteady musician who built a banjo by merging together sardine cans?

And anyway, "So my say" was the one telling the good news... the beach and the children all in a circle listening to the story of Rastafari and the return to Africa...

So the stars... and a rastaman...

And the radio with all that fabulous soul...

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The Twinkle, say the Jamaican bibles, mix genres (soul, pop, calypso, dub, reggae) and you can hear it, you can hear it a lot in "Countrymen"...

Then again, the bibles talk about the influence of a more rural sound... okay, okay, okay...

Okay...

It's just that the Twinkle can be a lot of things.

For example, like a voice of honey in the middle of the battle, they can be sweet and tribal at the same time, but, occasionally, just sweet.

And they can lull you with the sacred, and almost canonical, reggae sway, which is that accumulation of good energy that sways and doesn't need to explode...

And they can take you, therefore, from an almost classical sound to a whole series of impure things, with those voices, (always harmonized to perfection) that know all the tones (invocation/prayer/love song/call to arms) and travel on rhythms and melodies that, very often, are those you do not expect.

In short, a wonderful record...

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But, going back to sardine cans, here's how (source: Saint Eddy Cilia) the good Bob Marley built his first guitar: a big box -guess of what?- a bamboo reed and electrician's copper wires...

And anyway, if our saint, as he declares in the super article from Mucchio Extra, would like to have a time machine to go and peek into that courtyard where Bunny and Bob (two of the future Wailers) tried to imitate the songs they heard on the radio, well, I'd like it instead to go to that fabulous beach where the Grant brothers did the same thing.

So maybe I could also meet "So my say"...

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The album is from 1980. Also highly recommended "Love," a couple of years earlier...

Aloha...