New Age Steppers - The New Age Steppers (LP)

Some records feel like they were born in a particular city at a particular hour. The New Age Steppers, released in 1981 on Adrian Sherwood’s freshly minted On-U Sound, sounds like London at closing time, when punk kids spill out of venues and drift toward late night reggae dances. It is a debut that behaves like a mixtape by a restless scene, a cross-town conversation between post-punk and dub that still crackles with possibility.

Sherwood framed the project as a revolving door of players, and that looseness is the secret sauce. Vocalists from the punk end of the spectrum, most famously Ari Up of The Slits, collide with Jamaican-rooted session aces and On-U lifers. The opener many latch onto is Junior Byles’ “Fade Away,” a cover that rewires a roots anthem into something jagged and streetlit. Ari’s voice wobbles and teases, sweet in one line and serrated the next, while the rhythm lopes forward with the kind of bass pressure that rattles a lounge room even at neighbour-friendly volume. If you want to know whether New Age Steppers vinyl will click with you, start there, then let the echo drag you deeper.

Sherwood’s approach to the mixing desk is the other star. He treats the board like a live instrument, flicking sends to spring reverb and tape delay so that percussion skids across the panorama and scraps of guitar blink out like taillights in the rain. Instrumentals like “Radial Drill” lay out the method plainly. The groove is sturdy, almost militaristic, but everything around it is slippery, a whirl of dub sirens and clipped keyboard stabs that appear, smirk, and vanish. “State Assembly” pushes the mood the other way, a smoky slow-burn draped in dead-of-night vocals that feel whispered from just behind your shoulder.

Part of the thrill is hearing how unforced the hybrid sounds. By 1981, London had already hosted plenty of shared bills, Rock Against Racism had cracked doors open, and bands like The Pop Group had tangled with reggae and funk. The New Age Steppers takes that spirit, strips out the dutiful politics lesson, and lets the music argue for itself. The drums are often half-steppers, all negative space and pocket; the bass lines are anchor chains; and guitars go at it with a dub engineer’s sense of humour, here for a bar, gone for a verse. It should not be this cohesive, given the shifting cast, but Sherwood’s ear binds it together. He gives every element air to breathe and lets accidents become hooks.

The record’s place in the On-U Sound story is important too. It arrived right at the label’s dawn, essentially staking a claim for how far the imprint would travel. You can hear seeds that sprout later in Sherwood’s work with Dub Syndicate and in the feral energy of Mark Stewart’s subsequent projects. You also hear why Ari Up remains such a lodestar. Her presence is a live wire, proof that punk attitude and reggae feel are not opposites at all, just different routes to the same club.

Reissues have kept the album in earshot, with 2021 bringing a fresh remaster as part of the Stepping Into A New Age box set. Critics used that moment to underline what longtime fans already knew, that this is a hinge point where scenes touch and something new hums to life. If you are crate digging for The New Age Steppers vinyl, you will find that the new pressings carry the weight and width this music needs. The low end is deep but not muddy, the snares have bite, and those playful blasts of echo stretch out neatly across the stereo field.

As for where to find it, your local Melbourne record store might have a copy tucked next to other On-U titles, and there are plenty of solid places to buy New Age Steppers records online if you prefer the couch-and-cup-of-tea approach. Collectors who want to go wider can also chase other New Age Steppers albums on vinyl, since the series maps out a whole ecosystem of players and ideas that orbit this debut. For those of us in vinyl records Australia land, the import scene has treated these reissues kindly, so you will not be stuck with scalper prices if you keep an eye out.

Most of all, this album still feels alive. Drop the needle, hear the room tone bloom, and you are back in a world where genres are just suggestions. The New Age Steppers remains a conversation across a crowded dance floor, hand signals between musicians who speak different dialects but share the same pulse. It is history you can dance to, and a reminder that the best experiments never really end.