Since 1982, while a student at Calabar High School in St Andrew,  Rory Gilligan has been a selector for this ‘immortal sound’.

“It reached a point when the standards were falling and with the  move from vinyl to digital, people stopped paying attention to production and  mastering the material to achieve the best quality. So I really wanted to make a  difference,” he tells Splash.

Gilligan has chosen the ‘road less travelled’ when it comes to  identifying artistes with whom he wants to work.

“I could have taken the easy way out… create some beats and  ‘riddims’, draw for the biggest artistes, record them, and release a string of  sub-standard tunes. But that is not my style,” he explains.

“I like being the voice of the unknown. I get a rush out of  finding that voice, that artiste that nobody has heard of, or has not heard from  in a long while, and work with them… I get a rush from that,” he adds.

Even Gilligan’s production methods are different from prevailing  trends. He is not into looping tracks, but rather records section by section  with melodic introductions which he hopes will produce a signature sound.

To date, he has worked with a number of London sound systems,  reggae band Rootz Underground, singers Nadine Sutherland, Jah 9 and Keida.

He is particularly proud of the work he put in for Jah 9’s debut  album, New Name, a jazz on dub hybrid which was released recently to much  acclaim.

“I put my all into New Name with Jah 9. It was hours and hours of  voicing and re-voicing, trial and error, till we came up with what we thought  was the right sound.”

Gilligan states that one of his biggest peeves with the music  business came while promoting the Jah 9 project.

“I took one of her tracks to a radio station and the disc jock  listened and told me that it was wicked and loved it, but then said it would  sound better if it was performed by a man. I just could not believe what I was  hearing. I can’t believe people still think in that way,” he says.

Reflecting on his days at the turntable, he winces at some things  he did.

“Now that I’m in my 40s and a lot more conservative I look back at  how stupid I was in the things I did and said during the 1980s and ’90s. That’s  why now I cannot record certain things and certain artistes, because I know the  power of the microphone and the music, and the effect it can have on people,  despite what other people want to say.”

He is currently working on projects with the C-Sharp, Raging Fyah  and Pentatuch bands and musician Addis Pablo, but still yearns to find that  distinctive Jamaican voice.

“”I want to work with a voice. A voice like no other, something  that is very Jamaican with the haunting quality of a Burning Spear and the  unmistakable ‘Jamaicaness’ of a Culture (Joseph Hill).”