Ninja Tune is twenty years old this year. Subisidiary Big Dada is twelve. You’d have to be higher than Duppy on a Friday night to argue that these guys don’t know what they’re doing. And one of the best things that Will Ashon and company ever did was sign Roots Manuva. The bassy, rollicking South London rapper has never had a bad album. Hell, the guy’s never had a bad track. So any new release from him is always something to celebrate.

Or at least, it would be if it was actually new. See, this is collection of remixed, reworked and rewound Roots tracks by dub producer Wrong Tom (formerly of Trojan Records and Hard Fi) so to call it new is perhaps something of a stretch. Fortunately, as you may have already gathered, Roots has never had a bad album. So how does that gel with what is, in essence, a rehashed version of his already-damn-near-perfect material?

The answer is that it gels surprisingly well. Wrong Tom is a supremely gifted producer, and he manages the difficult trick of making Roots’ overtly hip-hop leanings work perfectly over dub – and, cleverly, stays away from ‘Witness (1 Hope)’, which we’d argue is utterly unimprovable. Check ‘Proper Tings Juggled‘, which melds the superlative vocals of ‘Juggle Tings Proper’ (see what they did there?) with gorgeous, videogame-style sound effects and an eardrum-shattering bassline. It’s light years away from the original, but Wrong Tom gets it. He knows how Manuva works, but this isn’t student and teacher stuff. It’s two colleagues in studio bigging each up. It might sound a little naff, but it’s the truth.

Not all these funky things are successful. ‘Buff Nuff’ was a Manuva track which was palatable – just – so messing with its delicate balance of pop-friendly groove and thumping kicks is a bad idea, brought to fruition on the iffy ‘Rebuff‘. And if you don’t like dub—or aren’t au fait with its nuances—this album could bewilder and confound you.

Having said that, we’re Manuva geeks here at Beatnik. We’ve spent hours—days—listening to his songs, so anything less than perfect would cause some eyebrows to be raised. If you’re not a Manuva geek, then you’re going to love this. It really is great fun. Now, if only Roots would stop swigging his Red Stripe and get back in the studio proper…

Words Rob Boffard