Nightfall Showcase

By the early ‘80s, veteran singer Johnny Osbourne was experiencing a commercial and creative renaissance. He’d been a recording artist for nearly a decade and a half; he'd cut rocksteady for Winston Riley and Coxsone Dodd in the late ‘60s and some fascinating roots sides during a sojourn in Canada. But it was the emergence of rub-a-dub, with its spacious, minimal rhythms, that truly let Osbourne come into his own as a singer. Osbourne recorded the songs that would make up Nightfall with the gifted producer Linval Thompson. Thompson was known for his ability to coax particularly hard rhythms out of studio band The Roots Radics, and his association with expert knob-twiddler Scientist ensured that Thompson’s records featured otherworldly dub mixes. Nightfall is one of the best full-lengths that Thompson produced during this period and features Osbourne operating at the peak of his powers. Particularly remarkable are the extended 12” mixes included on VP Records’ 2008 reissue of Nightfall; the best may be “Back Off," which gives way to an explosive deejay verse by Papa Tullo in its second half.