Alan Johnson – Stillness

“In the stillness of the night and the clamour of the day, Count Ossie’s wise poetic words ring true in every single way. Long live his legacy.” This homage opens the latest project from Alan Johnson, the dub-drenched alias of producers Tom Neilan and Gareth Kirby. Arriving in the same year as the 50th anniversary of Grounation, the ground-breaking album from Count Ossie’s foundational group, The Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari, ‘Stillness’ serves as both timeless monument to and urgent invocation of the spirit of the legendary drummer, band leader and essential figure to many Rastafari. Shaping deadly bass weight and minimal percussion around words taken from Ossie’s track ‘Poem’, Neilan and Kirby trace the origins of their reverberant sound while offering a singular statement on their own sound, drawing from the deep well of earth energy tapped into by Ossie’s words. “This is a track that initially came together fairly quickly in the studio in Bristol, some time back in 2020, mainly due to the fact that it h