Little Axe - The Return (2013)

Compilation album, featuring the early works of Little Axe, plus bonus tracks. Housed in a 6-panel digipak, strictly limited to 999 copies worldwide. Skip McDonald has been the prime mover behind Little Axe since around 1992. Joined by his Sugarhill and On-U Sound collaborators Doug Wimbish, Keith LeBlanc and Adrian Sherwood, they set out to give blues music a much-appreciated contemporary makeover, adding samples, dub, dancefloor and electronics into the mix to create hypnotic music. Under a name inspired by Bob Marley's "Small Axe" and gospel singer Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax, the debut album Wolf That House Built was a personal take on blues and dub, and was released to critical acclaim in 1994. This was followed by a partial release in Japan compiled in a slightly different form and with a different title (Never Turn Back) the previous year. The second Little Axe album, Slow Fuse (1996), was also well-received. Now Return is the essence of those first two albums (digitally-remastered) and very sensitively compiled with remixes and rarities (two tracks are unreleased out of those sessions).