Second Light

Dreadzone emerged in 1993, composed of former Big Audio Dynamite and Screaming Target members Greg Roberts and Leo Williams, alongside remixer and producer Tim Bran. That same year, Creation Records released the band's debut album 360°, which showcased the group's distinctive dub style that incorporated heavy elements of electronica such as sampling. ==Composition==

Dreadzone intended Second Light to emphasise melody and emotion and to feature a distinctly British quality, drawing influence from the eclectic array of old and new music from different cultures they felt surrounded by in London, which Brand felt was "so much more cosmopolitan than other cities." Casper Smith of Select described the album's sound as "dub meets keyboard-powered trance meets classical strings," while Dominic Pride of Billboard felt the album resisted categorisation as it has "too much beat to be ambient and [is] too laid-back to be dance." Credited samples include Johnny Clarke's "Love for Everyone" ("Love, Life and Unity"), Patrick Street's "King of Bally Hooley" ("Captain Dread"), Lee Perry & The Upsetters' "Dead Lion" ("Zion Youth") and Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Before Long" ("Out of Heaven"). The record is largely instrumental, as the band felt that lyrics would prevent listeners from "using their imaginations," according to Roberts. "I think people imagine all kinds of things when they're listening to our record." ==Release and promotion==

In the United Kingdom, Second Light was released by Virgin on 30 May 1995; the label also released the album in other European countries, although the American edition did not follow until later in the year. In the UK, Virgin stocked it at £9.99 for a limited period to incite new buyers. It remains Dreadzone's most successful album, and as of February 2017, it has sold 81,182 copies in the UK. Four singles from Second Light reached the UK Singles Chart; "Zion Youth" and "Captain Dread" both reached number 49 in May and July 1995 respectively, while "Little Britain" reached number 20 in January 1996 and "Life, Love & Unity" reached number 56 that March. As a Top 20 hit, "Little Britain" was the band's breakthrough single, ==Critical reception==

Second Light received acclaim from professional music critics according to Dominic Pride of Billboard, who wrote in an article that Second Light was a "gentle collage" in the vein of "many contemporary acts whose outlook has the boundary-breaking elements that dance music permits, without the monotony of the four-to-the-floor beats." In a less receptive review, Caspar Smith of Select wrote that the album's "relentlessly upbeat" sound was suited for the summer, but felt that "a pervasive sniff of novelty jollity" appeared on tracks like "A Canterbury Tale", and felt the album did not approach the "weirdness" of Lee Perry or Tricky. Colin Larkin referred to the album as "excellent" in The Virgin Encyclopedia of Dance Music, ==Legacy==

ranked Second Light among his twenty favourite albums ever. In their year-end lists of the best albums of 1995, OOR ranked it 20th, while Dominic Pride of Billboard jointly ranked it fourth alongside Leftfield's Leftism, calling both records "[v]ariations on a dub." Second Light also dominated the 1995 edition of the Festive Fifty, "Zion Youth" was at No. 5, "Maximum" at No. 9, "Fight the Power" at No. 16, "Little Britain" at No. 23, "Captain Dread" at No. 35 and "Life, Love & Unity" at No. 48. Peel himself, who had been following Dreadzone for several years, ranked the album at number 12 in a list of his twenty favourite albums of all time, published in The Guardian in 1997. The group met Peel several times at festivals and BBC Radio sessions, in addition to being invited to appear on Peel's edition of This Is Your Life. Second Light was re-released by EMI on 5 March 2012 as a double disc special edition including, among several bonus material, the Peel Session instrumental "Maximum" and the band's previously unreleased 45-minute set from Glastonbury Festival 1995. The special edition was remastered at AIR Studios by Matt Colton, who had also mastered Dreadzone's previous four albums. Roberts, who attended the mastering sessions, said of Colton's remastering: "He is quality and has made it have more warmth and bass end. I am well pleased. [...] We were lucky that Virgin had all the DAT tapes." Dreadzone toured in promotion of the special edition, with a segment of Second Light material dominating the end of the shows. ==Track listing==

• "Life, Love and Unity" (Leo Williams, Greg Roberts) – 5:43 • "Little Britain" (Roberts, Tim Bran, Carl Orff) – 5:14 • "A Canterbury Tale" (Roberts) – 8:40 • "Captain Dread" (Roberts) – 5:16 • "Cave of Angels" (Williams, Bran, Roberts) – 6:13 • "Zion Youth" (Roberts, Earl Daley) – 6:05 • "One Way" (Roberts, Bran) – 6:00 • "Shining Path" (Williams, Roberts) – 7:22 • "Out of Heaven" (Roberts) – 5:57 "while high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? ''Then you've a hunch what the music meant. . . hunger and night and the stars''"--> ==Personnel==

• Greg Roberts - drums, sampling, keyboards • Tim Bran - keyboards, mixing • Leo Williams - bass guitar • featuring :Dan Donovan - additional keyboards :Earl Sixteen - vocals on tracks 1 & 6 :Donna McKevitt - vocals on tracks 3 & 9; viola on track 2 • Vicky Bogal - created the stained glass window featured on the album cover • Love, Respect and Admiration are also expressed towards a long list of friends and influences. ==References==