Stonebridge Hi-Power

Harlesden in the mid-eighties had more reggae per square yard than anywhere in London: the shops along the High Street and Craven Park Road, the distributors, the pressing plant, the dances at Roundwood Park and the church halls off Church Road. Stonebridge Hi-Power came out of the estate at the bottom of the hill — a sound system first, a band second, and a band only because Horace Blake's brass players got tired of waiting for somebody else's dubplates. Horace on trumpet, Leroy Sinclair on bass, Curtis Palmer on drums, Patrick Oduya on organ and clavinet, and Ranking Desmond on the microphone, who had come up chatting on the estate's own set before anyone owned a tape machine.

Desmond is the whole difference. Where the older sounds let the operator say four words and step back, Desmond chats — the London fast style of the mid-eighties, eight or twelve bars of rhymes about the 18 bus, the dole office, the lifts in the block, and then the desk takes him and throws him into the echo. Stonebridge Park Special is the set's calling card; Church Road Sound Clash is the boast; Nine Floors Up is the estate with the lights off. Fire Pon Stonebridge is what the whole thing sounds like at one in the morning with the brass on top.