Shanti Yalah – Modern Babylon

Spanish singer, songwriter, and producer Santiago Villaverde, who is probably better known among reggae fans under his alias Shanti Yalah, is back with a brand new 12-track album entitled Modern Babylon. Released by his own record label, Nansa Records, which he runs alongside Roberto Sánchez of the mighty A-Lone Productions, Modern Babylon is his third full-length studio album. It follows up his 2017 debut album Creation and 2021 released Friends Of The One. Notable was the fact that both vocal sets were accompanied by their respective dub albums.

Showcase

No counterpart dub set coming along with the Modern Babylon album. But when a great lover of dub music like Roberto Sánchez is involved in the production of a project, the inclusion of dub is almost inevitable. And thus this Modern Babylon album is done in Showcase style, six vocal cuts and six dubbed out versions of the backing tracks. Back in the days, this turned out to be a useful format for Jamaican producers who were short of material by an artist.

Concept Album

By looking at the titles of the vocal tracks you can more or less guess that Modern Babylon is a concept album. And indeed, it is. While Shanti Yalah’s previous two albums mostly dealt with the spiritual aspects of life, the lyrical content of this one is all about reality and the actual state of the world we’re living in. In his songs, the conscious artist expresses his thoughts about the hidden truth of the health cartel (Pulling The Strings), the new wave of fact checkers (Fact Checkers), the corruption behind the modern Babylon system (Plague Of Corruption), and the real leaders behind the scenes (Modern Babylon). In the end, with all the previous messages in mind, he urges humanity to wake up because the ‘seventh call’ is coming. Musically, as could be expected, this album is a vintage and authentic sounding set. The riddims laid by the Lone Ark Riddim Force were recorded live on analog equipment and have a royal sound that harks back to the early 1970s. On top there’s the sweet sounding vocal of Shanti Yalah, which works well. This album features some noteworthy material, so take a listen for yourself.