Brain Damage (album)
1981 studio album by Dennis Bovell
Brain Damage is the third studio album by Barbadian-British reggae musician Dennis Bovell, released in 1981 by Fontana Records. His first solo album under his own name, following two dub albums released as Blackbeard, it was Bovell's first recording at his South London-based Studio 80. Having begun to feel that reggae had not progressed as much as he would have liked, he conceived Brain Damage as an attempt to fuse the genre with numerous rhythmic styles from Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean to highlight the genre's flexibility. The musician intended not to explore the international rhythms in a standard way but to take them to what he perceived as musical extremes. The direction was also inspired by the wide array of people in his audience.
The album fuses reggae with styles such as rock, R&B, calypso, soca, disco, boogie-woogie and jazz, with Bovell providing mixing, production and most of the instrumentation. A second disc of instrumental dub tracks also features as a freebie, reducing the album's original price to that of a single album. Bovell formed the Dub Band to promote the album in concert, having envisioned its material in a live context. Music critics praised the album's eclecticism and musical abilities. In 2006, the album was remastered and issued as a single CD by Front Line.
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