MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC

Beres started building his home studio in the early '90s, before it became the trend among successful reggae artists to take over their own production duties. But his spontaneous method of composing, and his unwillingness to compromise, made a home studio the natural choice. Although the trend of self-production as a whole has at times diluted the quality of music coming from isolated individuals poking at computer keyboards, Beres' little music room attracts a steady stream of Jamaica's most talented musicians. "The room has a sound," he says of his simple but effective analog sound lab. "Some of them say it reminds them of the old days at Channel One." Ace session bands like the Roots Radics, drummers like Sly Dunbar, hornsmen like Dean Fraser, and a variety of talented singers and deejays, both veterans and up-and-comers all come to "hold a joy," play a game of Ludi, share a smoke and a laugh, and to make music together. "When they go into my studio they don't want to come out," Beres explains with humorous understatement. But he knows all too well that the survival of classical reggae music depends on such oases of creativity. "We a try bring back the golden days of the seventies, when reggae had the live drum and horn sections." For a man who finds this fusion of the arts and science so ear-resistible, it's no wonder that for him ...