Holly Street

Holly Street was four people who shared a stairwell. Marcus Whyte and Junior Lindo had grown up on the estate with reggae in the flat and the Four Aces at the end of Dalston Lane; Karen Voss and Pete Hollins were post-punk kids from the same blocks who had followed the Slits and the Pop Group into dub and never come back out. In 1981 they were sharing a rehearsal room over a shop on Kingsland Road, and Pete had a reel-to-reel. He started recording the estate — the tannoy, the lift, the pirate stations bleeding into each other on the dial — and cutting it into what Marcus and Junior were playing. That was the band.

They never had a singer and never wanted one. What voice there is on a Holly Street record is a cry or a held note, treated until it is just another sound in the room, and half the records have no voice at all. Four Aces After Hours is the club after the crowd has gone, the rig still humming. Tannoy Dub is the estate announcement system turned into a bass line. Sixteen Storeys is the block at four in the morning, the lift machinery keeping time. It is dub the way Dalston sounded, not the way Kingston did.