Back in August, we announced that 3 brothers from Brooklyn, NY known as New Kingston would be releasing a new album with Kingston City. The album has been done, waiting to be released as they worked out a deal to sign & release the album with Easy Star Records.
On January 27th, 2015, New Kingston will release their new 12 track record that features a slew of guest appearances, including Tribal Seeds, Kimie Miner, Sister Carol, The Wailing Souls and the late reggae legend, Sugar Minott. This album also marks the first time New Kingston has recorded with a female artist.
New Kingston features brothers Stephen, Courtney Jr., and Tahir Panton, whom all sing and play instruments, joined by their father, Courtney Panton Sr., who plays bass.
New Kingston joins a label that also includes Easy Star All-Stars, John Brown’s Body, The Green, Cas Haley, Passafire and Rebelution.
“New Kingston definitely stands out in the current scene,” says Easy Star CEO Eric Smith. “Their show is dynamic and exciting, they are one of the hardest working bands we have ever met, and every other artist we talk to has nothing but positive things to say about them. Musically, we feel they bring something different to the label, something that feels current, and at the same, brings us back to our earliest days of releasing reggae in New York.”
Kingston City was mostly recorded at their home Kingston Studio as well as some instrumentation at Imperial Sounds, E.N Young’s studio. New Kingston produced most of the tracks on the album, but had one song produced by Sydney Mills of Steel Pulse a long with 2 tracks produced by Dub INC from France.The album was mixed by Ziggy Marley’s Grammy Award Winning engineer, Fabian Cooke.
When The Pier asked New Kingston about the evolution of their sound from their last album, Kingston University, Courtney Jr. responded that the album is “Way more alive, and way more raw. ‘Kingston City’ is the voice of the youth dem.”
A pre-order for the record will go live in December, along with some snippets of tracks from the record. In the meantime, New Kingston is touring out west until Thanksgiving. Stay tuned for track listing and more details as they’re made available to us.
Related Links:
New Kingston Website
New Kingston Facebook
Easy Star Records Website
Article By: Mike Patti
Watch: New Kingston – “Life”
