C’batch’s *I Guess You Want It This Way* is a fascinating piece within his continuing Vault series, the project having been based on a song which had been waiting about 26 years to take on its final shape. Inspired at the start by his Jamaican-born wife Yvette to look into reggae, the composition remained with C’batch over the years, the main hook and the verse melody refusing to vanish. When he returned to it in 2026 he finally wrote the lyrics and turned that long-standing idea into a six-track EP, allowing the song to exist in a number of different forms while still keeping its reggae spirit at the heart of it.
The different versions featured on the EP—’Cinematic Reggae 1′, ‘Cinematic Reggae 2’, the two original versions, ‘Reggae 2’ and ‘Reggae Dub’% show the way a single composition can adopt different characteristics without failing to retain its identity. The cinematic reggae versions indicate a more expansive and atmospheric approach, whereas the reggae and dub versions go further into the musical basis which inspired the song initially. Instead of appearing as six separate recordings, the tracks serve as variations of a musical idea that C’batch has had for decades, enabling listeners to perceive how changes in melody, groove and production can affect the character of the same song.
There is certainly a historical aspect to the project. Since it is dedicated to the famous Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin, whom C’batch met at Heathrow Airport in 2001, the EP links a personal musical memory with the artist’s long-standing association with reggae and the guitar. Moreover, the release fits in well with The Vault, a 2026 series which is devoted to bringing unfinished and previously unheard material from C’batch’s archives into the present. I Guess You Want It This Way does not seem to be an old song being brought back to life but rather an unfinished conversation at last reaching its end—one that has taken decades to complete, but which clearly never stopped asking to be heard.
“C’batch shows that certain songs don’t vanish with time; instead, they wait until you are finally ready to complete them.”
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