Cymande's 1973 *Second Time Round* is a meticulously produced collective work that fuses dub, jazz, and funk through spacious arrangements recorded at Pye Studios. The eleven-member group's disciplined looseness created a groove that later hip-hop producers would heavily sample, yet the album initially vanished before becoming a cult classic. Essential for anyone serious about production aesthetics, Black British music history, or the DNA of hip-hop sampling.
⚡ Quick Answer: Cymande's 1973 album Second Time Round arrived unannounced with a groove rooted in disciplined looseness, blending dub, jazz, and funk through meticulous production at Pye Studios. The collective's eleven members created intricate, spacious arrangements that later hip-hop producers would sample extensively, though the album itself initially disappeared into obscurity before becoming a cult classic.
There is a particular kind of groove that doesn’t announce itself — it just arrives, sits down, and refuses to leave.
Cymande’s second album came out in 1973 on Janus Records, and almost nobody noticed. The first record had done better, riding a thin wave of UK press enthusiasm for what journalists were struggling to call “Afro-rock” or “British funk” or just gave up and left unnamed. Second Time Round sold quietly and then disappeared, which is one of the more reliable ways to become a cult record.
Who These People Actually Were
The band had formed in London in 1971, most of its members having emigrated from Guyana, Jamaica, and the Caribbean more broadly. Patrick Patterson and Steve Scipio held down the core of it — bass and rhythm, the engine room. But Cymande were always more collective than individual, eleven people on a good night, and the second album leaned into that democracy.
The sessions took place at Pye Studios in London, engineered with enough space left in the mix that you can hear the room breathe. Producer Derek Gibbs kept the recordings dry and close, which sounds like a limitation but turns out to be precisely right. These aren’t songs that need reverb. They need air.
Ray King contributed percussion alongside Pablo Gonsales, and the conversation between them on “Bra” — which had already appeared as a single — is the kind of thing that hip-hop producers would eventually sample until the record wore through. That specific two-bar break became a cornerstone of what people now call the Amen-era breaks canon. De La Soul, Gang Starr, The Fugees all found their way into this record at one point or another, usually without much fanfare.
The Sound Itself
The album opens with “Anthracite” and doesn’t ease you in. The guitar tone is somewhere between dub and jazz, the horns are minimal but decisive, and the rhythm section does this thing where it sounds slightly behind the beat while actually being exactly on it. That tension — disciplined looseness, I suppose — is what makes Second Time Round feel like it was recorded at three in the morning by people who knew exactly what they were doing and had nothing to prove.
“Dove” is the one I’d put on for someone who’d never heard the band. Gentle enough to seem simple, intricate enough that you catch something new every listen.
There is a spiritual quality to this music that comes through without being preachy about it. Cymande were interested in black consciousness and pan-African identity, but the record wears those concerns lightly — they’re in the breath of it, not spelled out in the lyrics. Steve Scipio’s bass lines carry a dignity that’s hard to articulate without sounding like you’re reviewing a feeling rather than a record. But that’s honestly what it is.
The band broke up not long after this. No dramatic falling out that anyone recorded. They just stopped, the way things do in the early seventies when the money isn’t there and the labels aren’t paying attention. The records sat in crates for twenty years until hip-hop producers started finding them, and then the originals started selling for real money, and then there was a reissue, and then somehow in the 2010s Cymande got back together and played shows.
What’s remarkable is that none of the reappraisal changed the music. Second Time Round sounds exactly as good as it did in 1973 and exactly as self-contained. It wasn’t waiting for anyone. It had already said everything it needed to say.
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🎵 Key Takeaways
- 🎵 Cymande's 1973 Second Time Round was engineered with deliberate dryness at Pye Studios—no reverb masking the room's natural breath, which became its defining sonic signature.
- 🥁 The 'Bra' percussion break between Ray King and Pablo Gonsales became a cornerstone sample for De La Soul, Gang Starr, and The Fugees, unknowingly founding part of the Amen-break canon.
- 🇬🇾 Eleven-person Guyanese and Caribbean collective built the album on 'disciplined looseness'—rhythm sections that sound behind the beat while sitting exactly on it, creating intentional tension.
- 📉 The album sold quietly on Janus Records in 1973 and vanished for two decades until hip-hop producers mining crates rediscovered it, eventually driving original copies into triple-digit collector prices.
- ⚖️ Cymande embedded black consciousness and pan-African identity concerns into arrangements rather than lyrics, letting spiritual and political weight breathe through the music's structure.
Why did Cymande break up after Second Time Round?
The band dissolved in the mid-1970s not from internal conflict, but from lack of commercial traction and label indifference during a period when the money simply wasn't there. It wasn't dramatic—they just stopped, as many groups did when the early-seventies industry couldn't sustain them.
What makes the rhythm section on this album sound 'behind the beat'?
Patrick Patterson's bass lines and Steve Scipio's rhythm work create a deliberate tension by sitting slightly late while actually remaining metronomically precise. This 'disciplined looseness' gives the music a groove that feels organic and lived-in rather than mechanical.
How did hip-hop producers discover Cymande?
The records sat in obscurity for about twenty years until producers began digging through vinyl crates in the 1990s and found them. Once sampled extensively, original copies became sought-after collector's items, sparking renewed interest that led to reissues and the band's 2010s reunion.
Why did Derek Gibbs keep the Pye Studios recordings dry without reverb?
The lack of reverb wasn't a limitation but a deliberate choice that left space for the room to breathe naturally. These arrangements didn't need artificial enhancement—they needed air and proximity to convey their intricate, spacious quality.
More from Cymande
More from Cymande