UK based experimental reggae / dub label run by Adrian Sherwood, who sometimes also operates as On-U Sound (= artist credits page).
DO NOT CONFUSE with the US based DJ / club remix label, ON-USound (with no space between "ON-U" and "Sound").
Related labels are Pressure Sounds & Green Tea.
EFA released some remastered titles with slightly altered cover artwork before going under in 2004.
On-U Sound was relaunched in 2002 and kicked off again with Little Axe's 'Hard Grind' album. Look for newer stuff at catalogue number ON-U CD 1001 and higher.
Looking at the inner sleeve from a copy of 'Staggering Heights', ON-U LP 28 was going to be by CIRCUITS. Anyone know about that? Another forthcoming release listed (ON-U LP 29) was going to be a showcase album by Ashanti Roy & Mikey Dread that I don't think ever saw the light of day?
Got a copy of every LP vinyl release from this label. including one that I went round to Adrian and Kishi's house uninvited for one time,,,
They didn't tell us to f**k off like they might have but invited us in and made us a cup of tea and welcome. Crucial Tony. Keith LeBlanc and the gorgeous Miss Annie were there too.
My ultimate aim is to get one copy of all the available vinyl ever knocked out by the label. Have the sevens and tens as well as the albums, just the 12's to go..
well a bloke's got to have a hobby,
Love to Adrian and the On-U posse from Nobby of the Crazy Laindon Massive.
The post punk album is partly the product of an ongoing project to restore piles of mater tapes and DATs from On-U Sound. Warp Records are giving their support to this project and in addition, there are a pile of new releases ready to go. I doubt if there is going to be another wholesale reissue programme, but sounds like there is lots of good stuff to come.
Double LP of Sherwood's post-punk era mixes (mostly for post-punk bands) coming soon, anyone know if the entire On-U back catalog will finally get full re-release on vinyl and other formats, or will it be a series of compilations?
Anyone know why reissues of On-U releases are so erratic? One of the greatest labels of all time - and perhaps the least well served in tems of its back catalog.
Let’s not talk about the Sound of On U, everyone who knows the label recognizes the hand of dub-meister Adrian Sherwood. I would like to give attention to the On U Sound logo. As from the first release (ON-Usound1.) the characteristic way in which On U Sound is written appears somewhere on the label or record cover (apart from a couple of exceptions). It survived 30 years of (frequently) lowfi quality of cover design. And fortunately, at the latest rebirth of the label, it gets a prominent, honorable place again: “Disturbing the comfortable, comforting the disturbed”.
I'm not quite sure why this label never got its proper recognition, but this should be re-discovered by everyone with a serious interest in dub or electronic music.
My theory is that it was in its prime a little too early for the electronica craze. It wasn't house music or jungle, but was probably too dubby and funky for the industrial. Everyone thinks that "ragga techno" probably started in 1992, but the On-U Sound artists were making crazy tripped out dubby records with heavy industrial/electronics sorts of influences for years before that.
I don't think one can adequately describe the <i>profound</i> influence of Adrian Sherwood and the On-U Sound cast of thousands on contemporary electronic music (dub, techno, drum-n-bass, post-punk, electro, and ambient). And through all of this, Sherwood and his London-Kingston crew remain down-to-earth & unpretentious, spurning offers from major labels for nearly twenty years. Sadly defunct German independent label distribution 'giant' EFA did a marvelous thing in reissuing nearly the entire On-U full-length catalogue on CD between 1996-1998. On-U records never age.
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MJH1964
November 19, 2015