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Keith & Tex – Freedom

Name: Keith & Tex - Freedom | B Side Vinyl
Brand: Keith & Tex
SKU: BSV-960863
Price: 18.99 USD
Availability: InStock

$18.99

Following their critically acclaimed 2017 album “Same Old Story”-produced by talented and versatile producer-musician Roberto Sanchez, with all instruments played by Sanchez and Sanchez’s studio band, “The Lone Ark Riddim Force,” at Sanchez’s A-Lone Ark Muzik Studio in Cuerto, Spain-“Freedom” follows the same successful formula; again produced by Sanchez, the album combines sweet, soulful, melodic harmonies, and mature lyrics with the masterclass musicianship of Sanchez and his band, stunningly recreating the authentic sound Jamaican music studios produced in the 1960s and 70s. As with any productive collaboration, their additional experience together and time spent complementing each other has only sharpened the final product. Moreover, Keith & Tex are only getting better with age-making “Freedom” shine like perhaps no other album yet in Keith & Tex’s extensive discography. At the top of the album’s title-track, Keith calmly asserts “Denial of my freedom will never be accepted” before launching into a rocksteady anthem appropriate for the twenty-first century laden with soul-and meaning. The song demands freedom in its most fundamental forms- freedoms sometimes taken for granted but that find themselves increasingly threatened in a hostile, insecure world: “Free to work, free to vote, free to assemble, free to vote, free to toil, free to love, free to be-just free”. In “Who We Are,” a song that stands as a moral challenge to do better by our fellow brothers and sisters, Keith & Tex demand to know-backed by a driving ska beat and haunting organ- playing-“why we can’t show more love when there is nothing on the line?” By the same token, in a song about Babylon’s isms and schisms called “How Much Longer,” the listener is wisely and sternly advised: “You don’t get a cookie for good behavior.” Other representative songs on the fourteen-track album include sharp commentary on hot-button subjects like “Fake News” and the coronavirus (“Hotel Corona”: “Welcome to Corona, Hotel Corona, you may not like to stay….”), and then, of course, there are tracks about love, both complicated (“Uptown Girl”: “She’s an uptown girl in an uptown world, and here downtown, such a different world, we meet at the crossroads of up and down….”) and blissful (“My Sweet Love”: “My focus is always on you…we’re together for all good reasons”). Not only is Keith & Tex’s “Freedom” an album that should be in every collection, it’s a masterful work of art that should be experienced, enjoyed, revisited, and kept close-to the heart, mind, soul, and music player. To be played-often. Stephen A. Cooper, Writer and Reggae Journalist. credits released March 15, 2022

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Record Details

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Label	LIQUIDATOR MUSIC
Catalog No	LQ 144
Format	CD
Country	IM
Barcode	8445162600859
Condition	New / Sealed

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KEITH & TEX – FREEDOM is the 2022 album from these Jamaican rocksteady icons, produced once again by Roberto Sanchez at A-Lone Ark Muzik Studio in Spain, a record that continues the vocal partnership that produced some of the most authentic rocksteady harmonies of the late 1960s. Twelve tracks of original material that treats the tradition with complete respect while staying engaged with the present.

KEITH & TEX – FREEDOM

Keith Rowe and Phillip Tex Dixon came out of Kingston and made their names in the late 1960s with recordings for Derrick Harriott. Tracks like Top That Train, Tonight, and This Is My Song became genuine staples of the rocksteady era. They separated in 1970 when both relocated abroad, reconvened in the mid-1990s, and have been recording and performing internationally ever since. The partnership with Roberto Sanchez at A-Lone Ark Muzik Studio has given their late career output the production quality that matches the historical weight of what they originally built.

Freedom and What It Contains

Released in March 2022, Freedom follows the same approach that made Same Old Story work: Sanchez handling all production and instrumentation, recreating the authentic sound of Jamaican studios from the 1967 to 1969 period without treating it as pastiche, while Keith and Tex deliver vocal performances that carry genuine weight and experience. The title track opens with a declaration that denial of freedom will never be accepted, before settling into a rocksteady anthem with current relevance. Other tracks address social commentary, complicated love, and the present moment from a perspective that only musicians with this much history can offer.

For Collectors

Liquidator Music releases from Keith and Tex are the current standard for contemporary rocksteady with genuine roots in the original Kingston tradition. Freedom is produced at the same level as Same Old Story and is equally worth having in physical form. For collectors of contemporary Jamaican music that stays true to the rocksteady tradition, this CD belongs alongside Freedom and whatever the duo records next in this productive late partnership.

The Liquidator Music releases from Keith and Tex with Roberto Sanchez represent the contemporary rocksteady tradition at its most authentic and most fully realized. Freedom stands alongside Same Old Story as evidence that this partnership produces music worth owning in physical form, and for collectors of the genuine rocksteady tradition, having both albums is the right approach to this productive late chapter in the duo’s career.

Tracklist

1. FOOTPRINTS
2. HOW MUCH LONGER
3. FREEDOM
4. CAN'T YOU SEE
5. THE RACE
6. MY SWEET LOVE
7. HOTEL CORONA
8. FAKE NEWS
9. REGGAE ON THE ROCKS
10. UPTOWN GIRL
11. WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER
12. JETSETTER