Five more bands to look forward to this evening, starting in probably just over an hour with the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. This ten-piece ensemble has apparently played at Sunsplash before and went down very well; I've got one of their albums, but I definitely didn't expect the band to show up here, coming all the way from Japan. In any case, it will be nice to have a change from the reggae and dancehall vibes of the last few days.

Second on the main stage are the legendary roots group Israel Vibration. The band emerged in 70s Jamaica coming out of serious poverty to record a number of popular songs. Since then an extensive discography has amassed, but the original vocal trio has been through various splits and rifts and is now a duo. A friend of mine in Romania originally recommended Israel Vibration to me and I have enjoyed their music ever since, so to see them live today is pretty exciting.

Perfect, Fantan Mojah and Anthony B complete the lineup. I recently acquired Anthony B's latest record, Higher Meditiation, and there are some good tunes on there. His style is less roots and more dancehall again. As for the other two, I don't really know very much, but I have heard some positive things around here about Fantan Mojah.

As for last night, the major headline name was Gentleman and his Far East Band, which was more than impressive. It was definitely the best backing group I've seen at the festival so far, with a full horn section and three singers as well as the standard guitar, bass, keys and drums. So much of the time dancehall rhythms can become easily monotonous, with the same patterns coming out song after song, but this was not the case with Gentleman and that made the set a lot more interesting for me. He also player a few tracks from the album I have, entitled Journey to Jah.

Katchafire weren't quite as original as they had described themselves, but it was still a good show and their final song was a great cover of Bob Marley's "Iron Lion Zion", one of my favorites of his tunes. Prince Theo and Horace Andy were playing roots reggae and I especially enjoyed the latter, who came on to play the final set at around midnight. Andy has an amazing voice - some might even think it to be female first listening - and his songs were all about issues which were a lot more apt and suitable than what most of the modern reggae singers talk about. There's another recommendation for you.