Listening to the production of any disc, it’s easy to guess when and where it’s from. For instance, taking a minute to absorb anything from Dub is a Weapon, listeners can tell that not only is this a new band, but it’s made up of mostly American players – and they like rock music as much as dub. This approach works for most types of music – although, I was just recently fooled by Chalawa.

The production on Chalawa’s Chapter XII is really trebly and there’s a focus on the horn section which isn’t necessarily something that was going on in 1979 on other reggae discs. My initial guess was that – since it sounded so similar to a Tommy McCook compilation I have – that it was just a lesser and latter JA release. I even thought, for a moment that McCook was playing sax. I was wrong. The principals of the group, Alex King and John Forbes, I guess, don’t necessarily sound as if they’re straight from the islands. And while this isn’t a dub disc in the strictest sense, the instrumental tracks sound a bit too bright for it to have come from anywhere other than Canada.

That might sound bizarre, but by the 1970s there was a huge Jamaican population in Toronto. I can’t exactly explain the cultural reasons behind it, but having been to that city before, it probably seemed like the cleanest place on earth to emigrants – not just Jamaicans, but anyone who moved there. And while neither King nor Forbes hail from the island, they clearly were fans of ska, reggae and dub.

The info related to Chapter XII is sparse at best, but on a different Chalawa disc Leroy Sibbles serves as the bassist. And while that probably isn’t enough evidence to figure him as a player here, maybe he is.

Anyway, most of the tracks represented herein aren’t really on par with JA classics despite the fact that some indispensible players may or may not be on here. But this was largely a studio construction with King and Forbes both playing a number of different instruments on each track. As previously mentioned, the horns are a bit too bright for much of the disc and really, what dub fans want are dubs, not second rate horn solos. That being said, though, as this disc moves towards its natural end, “Picadilly Hop” sounds as similar to some JA classic as possible. But it’s this one track that eschews the focus on the horn section, instead using the rhythm as its main feature, the song includes only spare shards of horn notes draped in echo that probably couldn’t be achieved too easily a live setting. Again, though, these folks seemed to be more than comfortable in the studio, though.

The scarcity of discs from Chalawa probably accounts for this disc being posted at You and Me on a Jamboree. And while the dudes over there should be commended for their dedication to the genre, fans passing this disc up won’t be too disappointed.