Singles from this Album
The Loving Paupers ᕁ Victor Rice The Ghost of Ladders
Following the success of their 2023 release Ladders, Washington, D.C.'s The Loving Paupers return with a transformative listening experience: The Ghost of Ladders. This project is a complete dub reimagining of their previous work, meticulously crafted to showcase the instrumental depth and rhythmic precision that defines the band's "brooding, rootsy" sound.
The title serves as a direct homage to Burning Spear's seminal Garvey's Ghost, and the music honors that legacy of dub exploration. To bring this vision to life, the band reunited with Latin-GRAMMY winning engineer and dub specialist Victor Rice. Having engineered the original sessions, Rice possesses an intimate understanding of the tracks, allowing him to strip away the lush vocal layers and reveal the intricate, pulsing architecture underneath.
Legendary UK tastemaker and DJ Don Letts perhaps described the band's essence best in the original liner notes, noting that they seem to have been "raised with sixties pop hitting them in one ear and seventies reggae hitting them in the other." This duality is even more apparent on this dub version, where the pop sensibilities are haunted by cavernous echoes and weightless textures. It is this unique sonic signature that led BBC 6 Music to name the original project one of their "Albums of the Year."
As guitarist Jorge Pezzimenti explains, "We are excited for fans to hear these dub versions because it highlights how much energy and focus we put on the instrumental layers in our songs." From the atmospheric opening of "Dub in the Pocket of My Hometown" to the haunting depths of "Dub Abyss," the album is a masterclass in modern dub—balancing respect for Jamaican tradition with a polished, cinematic edge.
