Roots Archives Forum

dubwizer wrote: By the looks of it.. seems it has

Ah, thanks! I had only been looking on Discogs, where there were only entries for the LP's.

Pls allow one question: Don´t you own just even one original pressing?

I-Lion Tafari wrote:Pls allow one question: Don´t you own just even one original pressing?

LOL.. Not sure if this question is directed to me.
But I own Scientist rids on Thompson.. which sounds like crap.. and Big Showdown on Greensleeves which is VG-. Thought I'd get these two crisp clean sound to replace my current ones.

anyone know if this was a one off batch or will they press more since there clearly is a demand for early Scientist material.

The Russian company that put these out has gone under a bunch of different names: Lilith, Mirumir, Doxy, etc. and is definitely gray area at best. Just because there is a blurb on the jacket saying they licensed something from someone doesn't mean it is the case. You'd have to talk to the artist involved to see if there was indeed a licensing agreement.

I don't know much about this company, but it seems that many jump to the conclusion (not only here) that they are grey area, but I haven't really seen any solid evidence - is it mostly because they are Russian I wonder?

I have read contrary statements, I read a thread on another forum where it was mentioned that some Kiss reissues they'd done (that intially were thought to be fake/bootlegs) were confirmed as legit by their official website, but someone also said they were "trying to get them shut down" but it wasn't detailed what release(s) had propted that.

About the names, it seems "Lilith" is a sublabel to "MiruMir Music Publishing" that deals with Pop/Rock reissues (while the main "MiruMir" label do Russian music), there's also "Rumble Records" (oldies material), and the "Dub Mir" mentioned in the thread title might also be a sublabel, I have only seen it in relation to these Scientist titles. Nothing unusual about this really. (The "Doxy" I know of is an unrelated Jazz reissue label.)

They do seem to have very limited distribution though, and the first four of these Scientist titles are now gone from most places they were initially listed, so it might be that someone is on their case about these. I am not out to try to defend them but just to say that I think the case is open and it would be nice to have some kind of official word on the matter.

There are two Doxy labels, as far as I know neither is linked to Mir or Russia, one is a Jazz label and one is a European public domain label that I believe is Italian.

With regards the Scientist titles, what's hard to follow, the original recordings are owned by Greensleeves, which is owned by VP, therefore leaving aside historic Jamaican releases any release not on VP/Greensleeves or specifically licensed from them is not going to be legitimate. The fact that the titles have disappeared from most retail outlets, or didn't get stocked at all, tends to confirm that, I don't know for sure, but I suspect VP have been warning people off.

I know Scientist likes to paint himself as the victim and once upon a time there was a pro Scientist lobby regularly posting on here, but the facts are he doesn't own the rights to those classic records and that has been confirmed in a court of law. For those of you who think this is a case of the little man against a big label please remember that those tracks were not created by Scientist, he didn't write the music, he doesn't play on them, he didn't "produce" them, nor finance the sessions, he was a mixing engineer and got paid for that job. I guess the reason none of us can buy nice quality and affordable Greensleeves reissues on CD and vinyl is because of Scientist and his campaign against Greensleeves, hopefully one day we'll get those proper reissues.

I haven't got my hands on any of these yet, but studying the pictures at Discogs, and as has been noted earlier in the thread, these all say ”…issued under exclusive licence for the world excluding North America by Hopeton Overton Brown”, so it seems then that Scientist has licensed these out to MiruMir when it is not his thing to do. One could argue that the Russian label, if they are otherwise a legit business, should have checked up on this better, but maybe they are not wholly to be blamed if these were not properly licenced (it could of course also be that they are not too interested in checking up on the legalities).

Wasn't the court case heard in the US, perhaps Scientist believes the ruling only applies to the US, who knows, I guess it's down to VP/Greensleeves to do something assuming that's not the case.

I know from experience that more than one person can often claim to own the rights in Reggae, (sometimes it's actually the case), record labels have to be very careful about checking things out and always get everything in writing.

Dubmart wrote:There are two Doxy labels, as far as I know neither is linked to Mir or Russia, one is a Jazz label and one is a European public domain label that I believe is Italian.

I guess you can add a third to that list. I have a copy of Jorge Ben's first album on "Doxy" as well as a Brainticket LP on "Lilith". Didn't know they were boots when I ordered them.

Both are packaged the exact same way as LP+CD sets with the fake obi strip thing and both originate from Russia, just like the Dub Mir stuff. My guess is whomever is behind the Russian outfit we're talking about here just keeps changing their name to avoid being shut down. At one point there was a website, but that seems to have been taken down.