Shanique Marie & Finn – Lifey
- NICK DUTFIELD
- Dec 17, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 18, 2020
Jamaica might not seem a massively festive location for most people, but they don’t have access to the Christmas ´76 cassette that lives in my drawer. This tape is an object of great power, imagine the philosopher’s stone combined with pandora´s box, or is it Jeff Dujon´s? On it you can hear my sister and I singing Jamaica Farewell. We’d learnt it at Whiston Worrygoose school in Rotherham, the People´s Republic of South Yorkshire. Come Christmas 1976 we were settled on the other side of everything, Essex. But Jamaica Farewell lived on, and a fanciful blogger might suggest that this little glimpse of a Caribbean island, with dancing, music and wistfully bereft lovers was the first step of a long trip, via the Specials, UB40, Half Pint, On U Sound, making the ocean´s leap of course, and finally leading all the way here to Shanique Marie.
She’s the first Jamaican artist to feature on here, and I’m pretty pleased its happening in December. Not that it´s reggae, no more than Jamaica Farewell is. We off into bloopy love song territory here. Marie’s solo gear is factor 30 dancehall romance but on Lifey we get her honey vocals backed up with UK club production tricks. This is down to Finn, whose motto is Simple Beats With Sweet Samples. The first parts of Lifer got done when Shanique Marie played in Manchester as part of a showcase for the Kingston´s Equiknoxx music collective . That was back in 2018, since then they´ve been toiling away to perfect the track, and the blend they´ve arrived at is spot on. Pinpointing Finn´s production is a challenge (maybe it´s that mysterious genre, Nightbus), there’s whoop samples that did the rounds in ´87, blurps from ´95, steel drums made of C3PO´s kneecaps and full sedimentary layers of 21st century clicks. Some kind of synth archivist could probably do this bit accurately. Shall we just stick to calling it a glorious off-key dance racket, with great singing?
For added serendipity the sleeve photo shows Marie and Finn giving full toddler game, they´re probably about the same age that my sister and I were that distant Christmas, the one when we recorded Jamaica Farewell.
THIS WEEK
Shanique Marie & Finn – Lifey
960 views since 24th November Weekly Average Views – 292
LAST WEEK
Wasuremono – Big Big Smile
Weekly Average Views – 234 Blog Week Views – 199
EXTRAS
Shanique Marie & Finn - Movers
Caetano Veloso – Jamaica Farewell
Finn – 2020 Sampler
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