In doing so Ray took existing master tapes from the label’s vaults – many of them productions that featured the likes of The Scientist, Prince Jammy and Prince Far-I – and reimagined their rhythms in typically inimitable style. As a prominent presence within the Liverpool scene of the time – striking up familiarities with the likes of Pete Wylie, Holly Johnson and It’s Immaterial - Ray inevitably crossed paths with Cousins, and after helping him out with reissues from the Tamoki Wambesi back catalogue, Ray was convinced to record an album for the label. Cousins emigrated to Liverpool in the aftermath of Prince Far I’s murder and set up a record shop in Wavertree by the name of Cousins Cove. A long-time reggae stalwart whose band had recorded for Duke Reid, Coxsone Dodd and Joe Gibbs, Cousins later funded his own labels – Tamoki Wambesi and Uhuru - by saving up wages from his post office job. In lieu of Naffi’s method of imagining their own outré interpretation of dub, this time Ray had direct access to the source, courtesy of Roy Cousins, formerly of The Royals. With ‘Walatta’ Ray reconciled her love of reggae with the DIY pop Naffi’s latter day productions had perfected. Yet in 1979 the town incubated an altogether different sort of industry, from which emerged an altogether different kind of talent. A somehow depressing bit of trivia that seems less like a humdrum reality than something lifted out of an old Phoenix Nights script. In Newton-le-Willows, a larger town that comprises Earlestown and a few other areas, the local nightclub was formerly named after local ‘hero’ Rick Astley before being rechristened.

Sleepy, docile, post-industrial, a few pubs, a run of the mill high street. It might be said that in a modern era, it’s something of a typical English town. Its convenient location ensured its relative importance into the early 20th century, deriving its industrial significance from a wagon works, a sugar works and a few select engineering enterprises, all of which have since seen either a reduction in operations or complete closure and relocation.

It formed part of a significant passage on the Liverpool and Manchester steam railway line, the first of its kind, opened in 1830. Earlestown is located in the North West of England, a small town on the border between Merseyside and Greater Manchester.

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