Capleton – Heights of Fire

Evidence Music – digital, Vinyl, CD

Text: Mar­tin Bech

“Heights of Fire” is Capleton’s first full length album in 16 years. The long wait for a big project brings both a cer­tain mag­ni­tude, but also high expec­ta­tions for the vet­er­an to deliv­er some­thing cohe­sive and excit­ing. Although Caple­ton has been far from inac­tive, releas­ing a wide range of sin­gles and col­lab­o­ra­tions, a brand new album always feels spe­cial, more wor­thy.

The album fea­tures a wide range of inter­na­tion­al heavy duty con­tem­po­rary reg­gae & dance­hall pro­duc­ers like Lit­tle Lion Sound and Der­rick Sound, both from Gene­va, Switzer­land, Mix­ing Fin­ga from Kingston ‚Jamaica, Mista Savona from Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, Cos­ta Rebel from San José Cos­ta Rica and a remix by French pro­duc­ers L’Entourloop. Know­ing this, excit­ing and inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­tions of the high­est qual­i­ty are to be expect­ed.

Adver­tise­ment:

I lis­ten to the album with fresh ears, not hav­ing heard the sin­gles except for some snip­pets on social media. It starts imme­di­ate­ly, spar­ing no ener­gy on the open­ing track Red Again, the char­ac­ter­is­tic rough and raspy voice we all know and love over a superb hard hit­ting pro­duc­tion that suits him real­ly well. Caple­ton shows that he is still a force to be reck­oned with, excel­lent­ly lead­ing the lis­ten­er through the song with dynam­ic vers­es build­ing up to a catchy cho­rus that moves the song for­ward. But the real excel­lence comes, when the next track begins. In The Game starts with a soul­ful gui­tar and cool sam­ples that are accom­pa­nied by a soft­er side of Caple­ton’s voice. A ten­der cho­rus meets high inten­si­ty vers­es that are bal­anced and nev­er over the top, one of my favorite tunes on the album.

The fol­low­ing three tunes are more tra­di­tion­al reg­gae songs with a slow­er pace and soft­er sounds, that allow the album to breathe. Eesah’s fea­ture on Deh Pon Mi Mind is the high­light of thi set of tunes as he deliv­ers a skill­ful and ener­getic verse that bal­ances out Caple­ton’s low ener­gy approach.

Track num­ber six, Behave Your­self, is one of my top picks from this album. A heavy bassline leads the track and Caple­ton rides the rid­dim with ele­gance. Dynam­ic vers­es and a cho­rus that car­ries the tune and lets the pro­duc­tion shine in its own right. A tes­ta­ment to that some­times, less is more. The track is fol­lowed by Baby­lon So Evil, fea­tur­ing both Stephen and Dami­an Mar­ley, a great com­bi­na­tion and a great tune. The scaled down pro­duc­tion leaves room for the vers­es to stand out and both Mar­ley broth­ers deliv­er great­ness, sure­ly a high­light for many lis­ten­ers. The next track is a L’Entourloop remix of Burn Dem Down, which marks the halfway point of the album. The L’Entourloop pro­duc­tion brings a dif­fer­ent sound to the project and works per­fect­ly as a palette cleanser to the quite hefty 55 minute run­time of the album and keeps the lis­ten­er from los­ing inter­est and focus.

The Sec­ond half of the album fea­tures more great songs. Sense­less Killing is based on the Den­nis Brown song If I Had The World, excel­lent pro­duc­tion by Mix­ing Fin­ga brings an old school vibe to the mix which can also be heard in New Age and Haf­fi Know Dem, both rem­i­nisc­ing of late 90s tunes with nice synths and drum sounds from that decade. Der­rick Sound also deliv­ers two fan­tas­tic con­tem­po­rary reg­gae tunes in High­way Rob­bers and Tired Of The Dra­ma.

The clos­ing song on the album, All Night, is a hard dance­hall tune. Not in any way a bad song, but this type of dance­hall style has not been fea­tured on the album before and comes seem­ing­ly out of nowhere. Some­how it does­n’t rep­re­sents the sound and feel­ing of the oth­er­wise great thal­bum, which makes its end­ing feel a bit anti­cli­mac­tic and dis­ap­point­ing.

I real­ly appre­ci­ate this project, some songs I liked instant­ly and some have grown on me. Caple­ton feels very mature in his deliv­er­ance, well bal­anced, dynam­ic and adap­tive depend­ing on what the tune and pro­duc­tion needs. His lyrics and themes of anti-vio­lence and faith feel gen­uine and close to his heart, mak­ing them potent and worth lis­ten­ing to. The ros­ter of pro­duc­ers come with their own sounds which keeps the album inter­est­ing even after sev­er­al lis­ten­ings.

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