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various artists
Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up (Numero Group)
$18.99
I can pretty much guarantee that this is like nothing you have heard before: funk, reggae, brukdown, disco and soul all boiled together in the obscurity of Belize City and served up in 16 remastered tracks from original tapes and 45s made in Belize in the 60s and 70s. Comes in a nice package and includes good notes on the artists, the music and the scene.
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"From the first crackling high-hat hits to the almost synthesized sounding bubble of an electric organ, it's a crate digger's wet dream -- tight, imaginative and full of fire." Salon.com
"The 16 tracks chosen for Cult Cargo make the case for Belize’s importance not just by their quality, but also for the idiosyncratic twists they give to everything from ska and Stax soul to Latin jazz." Time Out Chicago |
Tracks and audio samples
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It is here in these sixty odd minutes that The Numero Group unveils a style of music completely unknown to the greater world before we dragged it from the beaches of Belize. The national dish of Belize is made with a diverse mixture of ingredients, pig's tail, potatoes, plantains, bananas, boiled eggs, yams, whole fish, thrown in a pot, and boiled to perfection. They call it a Boil Up. The music of this collection combines equal parts of R&B, calypso, disco, funk, reggae, bruckdown, soul, folk, and whatever else can be found back on the bottom shelf of the musical pantry. This too is called Boil Up, and it’s anything but leftovers.
Almost nothing was known of the records made in Belize between 1960 and 1980. A few bootleg compilations had lifted the Professionals break-laden cover of "Theme From The Godfather" while criminally ignoring their soul-cum-island-dancer "The Back Stabbers." The Soul Creations "Funky Jive" was a mid three figure single owned by few, though sought after by many before we turned up the remaining stock of that 45 in a dank basement under the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. That accidental discovery aside, Belize's CES label was a secret kept by time and a Belizean community that had moved away from phonograph records as soon as it was possible.
As is our habit here at Numero, we’ve taken special care in restoring these seventeen songs from their original analog sources. Paul Q Kolderie and Sean Slade at Camp Street (Radiohead, Pixies, Hole, Morphine), along with Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering worked side by side with us, scouring through more than thirty reels and thousands of feet of tape. Another hundred or so hours went into re-mastering, remixing and reevaluating, all in search of the perfect blend of passport stamped rhythms, second-deck cruise ship melodies, hotel pool calypso, soundtracks to movies not-yet-made, and anything else savory, or unsavory, enough to throw into the pot.
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Please note!
Most CDs have been
imported from Europe or Asia.
They are not all
shrink-wrapped, and I am not
going to con you by wrapping them
here just to make you think they
have been sterilized in America.
We guarantee that the CDs and the
contents are all brand new and in
perfect condition. Whenever I
can, I use recycled shipping
materials. They may not look as
pretty on the outside, but they save
money and keep the trash dumps a
little bit emptier.
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