Like the members of (now-defunct) The Screaming Orgasms, Moisty Atsushi is a Japanese musician who lives in NZ and is deeply passionate about ska, rocksteady and reggae. He’s such a fan of the Skatalites that he travelled to Jamaica to pick up tips on how they got their sound, and even managed to get founding band member Lester Sterling to play alto sax on the album!

The sound is real vintage analogue, and with song titles like Rasta Cow and Dedicate to Don, Moisty shows that he can have fun while being dead serious about making authentic art. Atsushi’s bandmates must be heavily into it too, because the whole thing is impeccably done. Which means it sounds old-school, messy in places, not all shiny and polished, but heavy with feeling. It’s really refreshing to hear that kind of thing these days, and it shows that if you put your heart and soul into something, it means a lot more than how much you spent on the recording sessions. This is the closest thing to ’60s ska you’re going to get from here. If that sounds good to you, have a listen to them on their Bandcamp.