Horace Andy - Midnight Rocker

Horace Andy - Midnight Rocker

Release date: Friday, April 8th 2022

Label: U Sound/V2 Records

Adrian Sherwood has spent a long time realising his dream of making an album with legendary Jamaican vocalist Horace Andy, beloved by reggae fans worldwide for his classic 70s and 80s tracks for labels such as Studio One and Wackies such as "Skylarking" and "Money Money", and boasting proper crossover appeal in modern times via his frequent contributions to Massive Attack, being a mainstay of their touring line-up and singing on all of their studio albums to date.  

Midnight Rocker has been approached in a similar fashion to the late-career quality that Sherwood coaxed out of Lee "Scratch" Perry with the Rainford and Heavy Rain albums, assembling a crack team of players and spending many months perfecting performance, arrangements and mixing. The result is 11 remarkable tracks that sparkle with superb musicianship, carefully crafted production and some truly beautiful vocals from Andy.  

As well as revisiting some Horace Andy classics like "Mr Bassie", "Materialist" and "This Must Be Hell" with fresh production, the album also features brand new material penned by LSK, Jeb Loy Nichols, George Oban and Adrian Sherwood. The pair have also versioned a much-loved early single by the group that Andy is most associated with, Massive Attack, although Shara Nelson took the lead on the original “Safe From Harm” and here Horace steps up to the mic. Interestingly, Shara Nelson recorded with Adrian Sherwood several years before the inception of Massive Attack, and 1983’s lost street-soul classic “Aiming At Your Heart” could arguably be cited as a blueprint for the later group’s sound. 

For more information: peter.schoor@v2benelux.com