Trellick Sound

Trellick Sound was never a band that played gigs. It was a sound system first — a rig built in a lock-up under the Westway in 1979 by Errol Grant, who had carried boxes for Sir Coxsone as a teenager and wanted a set of his own. The four men who ended up in Studio 80 with Dennis Bovell in 1981 were the same four who humped the speakers up the Trellick Tower stairs when the lift was out: Errol on the mic and the desk, Clive Prescod on bass, Tony Farquharson on drums, Mikey Henry on organ and melodica. They cut dubs because they needed dubs to play — exclusives for the Acklam Hall Saturday dance that nobody else could drop.

The records are what the dance was: bass first, drums second, everything else a rumour. Errol never sang and never let anybody else sing. "Wheel." "Version." "Hold tight." Four words, maybe five, then the echo takes them. Golborne Road Steppers is the sound at full weight; Under The Westway is the same rig at three in the morning when half the crowd has gone and the bass is talking to the concrete. Carnival Monday Dub is the record they cut the week after the 1981 Carnival, still ringing.