Customer Reviews

Language Barrier

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This album first came out in 1985, with practically no stateside recognition. Which is a shame, because this is right up there with Herbie Hancock's "Future Shock" for originality.

Think high octane Drum n Bass with flushing toilets and keyboards thrown in for good measure. The album is an onslaught of aural alarms and craziness. Yet, holding it down like a rock are the inimitable Sly and Robbie. This is a great record. Very urban sounding and almost threatening, in a weird way. Plus, any album that has Bob Dylan on it is at least worth one listen!

Not to mention Bill Laswell, Wally Badarou, Herbie Hancock, et. al. If you like disjointed yet somehow plausible insanity, this is one to have. One of those recordings that hits the spot when nothing else will. Highest marks for this quirky and very original work from two superstars of Jamaican music, and yet another example of how these two were forgetting stuff most other musicians will never have the chops to even approach.

Do you know a lot about astrophysics, the way steel alloys are compounded to make cars? The rate per hour dust collects on a Gatorade bottle?

Well, I know a lot about music, but when it comes to reggae, I probably know less then you do about the questions posed above. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh are givens if you grew up in the 1970s and your mainstream record buying parents felt compelled to own a reggae album sometime around 1978. But subtract this and I am, for today, in the same armpit as most of the white American public. I have an expert friend and he is working with me on this.

But in the meantime, I heard Miles Davis' "Black Satan," redone by Sly and Robbie on Language Barrier and I thought wow: if Miles himself were recording On the Corner in 1993 and not 1973, this is probably how "Black Satan" would sound

Great. From what I understand from my mentor, this was Sly and Robbie's crossover album, and for now, I will just have to take his word for it and listen to Language Barrier without my usual analysis but in pure subjective bliss.

Well, no shortage of that here. Listening to these big 80s/early 90s beats with Sly and Robbie's obvious grit is great. I have an old school stereo with massive Polk speakers, so play Language Barrier even volume at three, and am a two year old again, a foot high and lost in a wonderful cave of sound, drumbeat boulders rolling past and sound stalactites overhead.

In a few years or less I will know more about this mighty genre to give a more informed opinion on great albums like Language Barrier

I am learning more about reggae all the time. Just yesterday, I was telling my friend, I just love that Englebert Humperdink guy..............

I've had this vinyl for two decades. I was happy to run across it on CD. My favorite Sly & Robbie!

you like funk fusion reggae check out this release also this features afrika bamabaata, manu dibango, herbie hancock, bernie worrell anmd mike kidd funkadelic hampton.