Victor Rice – Welcome to Samba Rocksteady

Victor Rice is a musical hero. As a bass player, engineer and producer he was involved with most of the groundbreaking ska bands which emerged from New York in the early 1990s like The Scofflaws, Stubborn Allstars, The Slackers, New York Ska Jazz Ensemble or The Toasters. As he delved deeper into producing he began experimenting with dub and quickly gained a reputation as a highly original and much in-demand engineer and dub producer, for example for new York’s Easy Star Records and the Easy Star All Stars, contributing to highly popular records like “Dub Side of the Moon” or “Radiodread”.
After moving to São Paulo, Brazil in 2002, Rice continued to produce reggae and ska music by a variety of international acts, including Firebug (Brazil), The Moon Invaders (Belgium), The Stingers ATX (USA), The Japonicans (Japan) and Chris Murray (Canada), Pitshú (a.k.a. Alberto Matondo Manzambi), Cedric Brooks and Buford O’Sullivan (USA).
Rice has also received top recognition for his mixing and engineering capabilities during his immersive stay in Brazil, which helped him bring home two Latin GRAMMYs (2015, 2016) and become further knowledgeable in the depths of underappreciated Brazilian music.
SMOKE, his first solo album in 15 years, not only combines many of these musical influences but also reunites him with some of the musicians he has collaborated with in the last 25 years. It was produced by Nico Leonard in Belgium and features musicians from The Moon Invaders and The Caroloregians as well as fellow Americans Rolf Langsjoen (Skinnerbox, Stubborn Allstars, Moon Invaders) and Buford O’Sullivan (Scofflaws, Easy Star Allstars, Brooklyn Attractors).
Victor stated his goal for the album “was finding a way to fuse two different styles of music and dance from the 1960’s, Brazilian samba-rock and Jamaican rocksteady.” Consequently, he calls this new blend Samba Rocksteady.