Chief cherry-pickers Isle of Jura double down on their ’21 Greekie reissue and pressing of his Ambient Warrior LP with this lush hybrid of dub, tango and flamenco guitar on a first time vinyl pressing.

Ronnie Lion hails from Brixton, where he ran roots reggae label Lion Music, known for its open-minded approach to fusing reggae with myriad other styles, as heard in his Ambient Warrior gear with guitar player Andres Terrano, who would go on to work with Basement Jaxx. His Ambient warrior work recently resurfaced on Isle of Jura in 2023 with ‘II’, following a 2021 reissue of his 7” ‘Greekie (My Island I Will Never Forget)’, and those sound come again in ’Spanish Town’, a heartfelt dedication to the capital of St. Catherine in Jamaica, defined by lead guitarist Sean Wilkinson’s lissom, lyrical flamenco melodies applied to strolling roots and dub reggae grooves. The nine instrumentals of ’Spanish Town’ waft over like hazy recollections of the ‘90s beach holiday in the Med that we never experienced. Ronnie Lion’s pleasingly plastic digi-dub backing and subtle rendering underlines warm keyboard pads and of course Wilkinson’s melodies that roll off the fingertips between the furtive, almost noirsh appeal of ‘Hombre Peligroso’ and the sprung stepper ‘Alligator Pond’, taking in airborne melodica riffing on ‘Central Village’, and the heady skank of ‘Naranja Colina’ next to the bubbling ace ‘Grants pen Steppers’ with its brooding choral motif, and working just shy of call centre hold music in ‘The Reunion.’