It's hard to understand how a box set thus titled could fail and, predictably, it doesn't. The great thing about the best of these Cherry Red box sets is how they manage to combine what you know and already love with stuff you may missed out on first time around, or else has been lost among the fading memories of an ageing brain.
This 3CD set gleefully sets up punk/dub crossovers by the usual punk suspects - The Slits, The Clash, The Ruts - with the usual dub suspects - Dillinger, Linto Kwesi Johnson, Mad Professor - but, even more gleefully, doesn't stop there. Dub delights I've either forgotten or hitherto overlooked come from the like of Boomtown Rats, XTC and Sir Horatio. Other oddities are much-underestimated scouse outfit Cook Da Books and, gak, Thompson Twins. Back to the reassuringly predictable, we get a couple of 2-Tone cuts and another chance to hear The Pop Group's She Is Beyond Good & Evil, if you needed it - and who doesn't?
I'm playing one track from each of the three CDs in my FSK show this month. See it as a taster for an album whose magnificence is entirely precitable while the variety of what's on offer still manages to surprise and delight in roughly equal measures.
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