‘Earth Feel It’ - Xterminator, VP to release vinyl box set Record Store Day
Published:Tuesday | March 10, 2020 | 12:07 AMKimberley Small/Staff Reporter
New releases don’t always mean recently recorded, written or even that they will be ‘available on all digital platforms’. In his recent work, young label executive Kareem ‘Remus’ Burrell has shown that music is timeless, and there is freshness to be found and transferred from analogue to digital … and back again. Following last month’s release of Run Away, featuring vocals by the late Bunny Rugs along with young reggae acts Samory-I and Karbon, Remus is at it again, this time in collaboration with VP Records for the release of a seven-disc vinyl box set, Earth Feel It.
Scheduled to hit the stands on Record Store Day (April 18), the seven 7-inch discs will have A and B sides, featuring songs by the Crown Prince of Reggae Dennis Brown, Marcia Griffiths, Sizzla, Turbulence, Nadine Sutherland, Beres Hammond, Chezidek, Singing Cologne, Luciano and Gott-Yo. “Some of the songs were from the volume series I had out digitally, as well as songs that my father produced for VP Records that weren’t released,” Remus told The Gleaner.
14-song collection
Limited to 1,500 copies, the 14-song collection spans recordings dated from 1993 to 2009, drawn in part from XTM.Nation’s two-volume digital releases, Fatis Tapes In The Oven Volumes 1 & 2 and from unissued recordings in the VP Records archives. It also includes several deep cuts not previously available on the 7-inch format.
In the shadow of his father, a younger Remus was immersed in analogue recording and producing. And upon Fatis’ passing, Remus was buried in decades of shelved songs and recordings. Now, he carries on the legacy of his father’s Xterminator label, with the work of his own XTM.Nation, through transferring the analogue files to digital. “To anybody who walks in the studio, young or old, or if they have nothing or something to do with music, it’s always a crowd-stopper,” Remus shared.
Vinyl is not the most lucrative distribution medium, so Remus is in it to stoke nostalgia. The Earth Feel It box-set release is also to offer those who exist on the latter part of the paradigm insight into analogue practices. “There’s a certain community, a demographic that loves it. They were brought up on it, or probably heard about it. And there are new mechanisms now, where they’re making portable vinyl players that can be connected to your laptop via USB and you can link the vinyl straight to your computer. That’s just a cool factor for young youths. To the older generation, that’s what they were brought up on. As a youth, I was immersed in it. I knew what it was like, but it’s still a nostalgic feeling,” he shared.