Inna City Pressure [Original recording remastered]

Whither reggae in the new millennium? Since it can't go backward as some would prefer, why not move forward with this visionary Brooklyn-bred singer-chanter out of the cutting edge Mutant Sound System crew? His answer is a reggae-dominated boogie shake rendered more broadly appealing by drawing on a wealth of contemporary music, including jungle, dub, calypso, R&B, hip-hop, jazz, punk, ska, rock, and then some. That throbbing soundscape is presented on Israel's debut set with no breaks between cuts, all the better to evoke the deliriously chaotic vibe of an old-time-sound-system dance recast into this brand-new, polyglot form, with the good doc dropping an up-to-date spin on classic reggae mic intelligency. Israel's acutely rendered observations on life in the international ghett-io are as hard-nosed as any thug MC's, but steeped as they are in the rosy positivity of his Rastafarian faith, they hold the vision of other possibilities.