Stinky Jim: It's Not What It Sounds Like (bandcamp)

For three decades now Stinky Jim (Jim Pinckney) has been championing and playing a kind of outlier/outsider dub reggae and mix-up culture through his bFM radio show Stinky Grooves, some excellent compilations on his label Round Trip Mars which released SJD, Tourettes and many others (we recommend the old Sideways collection for newbies, long an Essential Elsewhere album) as well as being part of the innovative Unitone Hi-Fi.

He's toured home and abroad, taken his decks to gigs huge and small, been to the source many times (Jamaica, if you aren't keeping up) and now delivers a very welcome new installment of his seductively smoky grooves, hypnotic melodies which creep up slowly and some delightful scene-setting (check Hamlet Momentito which just draws you in with its suggestion of an escape to somewhere exotic).

There's also dub-pop here (the catchy Shifta Situation) but quite often you'll feel, “Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in Jim's headspace”.

Very nice place to be.

In the Nineties when interviewed about Unitone Hi-Fi he nailed down his ethic: “There’s no point in getting precious about it. Get it down, keep it fresh and let it sizzle. No point in worrying about getting the sound like the textbook says. “Just keep it moving . . . ”

This – under an apt title – is fresh and moving.

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You can hear and buy this album (very cheaply!) at Stinky Jim's bandcamp site.