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“East of the River Nile” is not your typical dub record. Instead of the usual bare-bones arrangements doctored with echo and sound treatments, keyboardist Augustus Pablo give us a straight ahead instrumental reggae album that features layers of classic analog keyboards. It’s the sound of the layered electronic keyboards that makes this one different from the usual dub crowd, and gives it something more in common with 70s psychedelic keyboard jazz albums like Les McCann’s “Layers” or exotic instrumental art-rockers like Bo Hanson. The groovy electronic albums of Les Baxter and Denny Martin might come to mind, and Pablo’s way of doubling the clavinet and string synthesizer for melodies sounds a lot like Bernie Worrel’s signature work with Parliament/Funkadelic. This is the dub record that crosses over into that special 70s genre of the instrumental multi-keyboardist album, released back when eager fans of multi-stacked keyboard setups would search the backs of album covers to see how many cool keyboards were being used.
Another thing that helps Augustus Pablo standout from the dub crowd is his gift for melody. “East of the River Nile” is full of well developed tunes that draw on 60s art-pop and movie type themes which are creatively arranged with Pablo’s arsenal of keyboards. Every song has a unique sound pallet and color. Although fans of classic dub reggae are probably already well aware of this one, “Nile” should also have a lot of cross-appeal to collectors of exotic instrumentals and rare groove.