What would we be without our Scandinavian countries? Is anyone aware, how important these countries are for the world? Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland... ok, technically only the first two are really Scandinavia but we are generous today. ;)

Some of the best dub releases during the last years come from Sweden and Finland, especially Sweden, I wannabe-Finn have to admit. Be it Shiloh-Ites, Lush Records, Social Living Sounds, Finn the Giant or Meditative Sounds: They all have in common that they make excellent dub music, pleasantly fresh and with the bit of Northern Lights (astr.) touch which only Northern Lights (the people) have.

In this case, the most known Swedish Soundsystem Meditative Sounds offers another crucial 10" with two of their previous dubplates: The A-Side comes with a heavy stepper featuring Murray Man pon de mic ("Hands Up"), soundsystem optimised as you would expect, led by Murray's deep voice and with only minimal instrumentation: some keyboard skanks, a bit of melodica here and there and of course, with a lot of echos. At home, the tune is missing a certain something but well, it is not made for home listening. Sound selectors should better add this tune to their selection soon.

The B-Side presents a completely different style: "Root of All Evil" is, well, how do you call that style? Extremeskanking? Grooveness? I don't know. I only know that I like this song the best due to it's excessive skanking. A true headnodder. Or is it called headbanger? The featured vocalist is African Simba from who I haven't heard in a long time. It's kinda refreshing to experience a known singer newly like this. Very nice contribution.

All in all, I rate the release with 4 stars, surprisingly because I don't like the stepper enough. ;) You get samples and information on the Meditative Sounds website.