Author Eric Mandel

In 1998 Style Scott founded his own label in collaboration with the Berlin distributor EFA Lion And Roots. The first two releases were two Dub Syndicate albums: “Mellow and Colly” and “Fear of a Green Planet”. Conceived as a “sound clash” between London and New York, they were based on the same eight riddims that Scott had recorded as usual with bassists Flabba Holt and Bagga Walker in Kingston. “Mellow and Colly” was mixed in New York by Scientist. “Green Planet”, with two additional riddims and two slightly longer versions, was a 360° On-U-Sound production, but also contained a souvenir from New York: Bill Laswell added an over theredub a bassline. To this day I'm not sure which one. In the USA, the album was released with an alternative cover that rather bluntly referenced Public Enemy's “Fear of a Black Planet”. And that's a bit misleading, because at first glance DS continued the cozy course on “Green Planet” that they had established in 1996 with Ital Breakfast, their last album on On-U Sound for the time being. The Japanese punk kids from Audio Active were now up to mischief there, and Style Scott had just previously recorded an adorable atomic-apocalyptic album with Bill Laswell on Word Sound, which had almost no harmonics or melodies. On the other hand, “Green Planet” was a bit like a hippie camp. Tablas, violins, languid melodies and sayings from the Rasta poetry album, the riddims with the exception of one (“Wake Up”) all closer to lovers rock than to the dancehall present, all seemed a bit underwhelming to me at this stage of my life. Nevertheless, I always returned to this Soundclash double album, played the versions individually or as an album back to back and enjoyed the different mixing approaches. While “Mellow & Colly” was sparsely and leanly equipped, I also came to appreciate more and more the calmness and sovereignty that characterize the production of “Green Planet”. The remastered re-release of “Fear of a Green Planet(Echo Beach) on the 25th anniversary makes these strengths, if anything, stand out even more clearly. The production is, as the English would say, “lush”, that is, in the landscape sense, in full juice. Everything flows, drips, blossoms and pollinates each other in this pastoral idyll where there seems to be no struggle for survival, only harmony. Garden of Eden instead of jungle. The sounds don't clash, they respectfully surround each other in an oceanic offbeat current, without ever washing away the boundaries of kitsch. Although everyone may draw their own boundaries. The spiritual highlight is the actually wordless “Not a Word” with its goosebumps violin, after which the tempo increases with a stepper (“Dubbing Is a Must”) and a dancehall riddim (“Wake Up”) slightly increased. From here it only gets deeper and more minimalist: “Hey Geoff” is reminiscent of his colleagues Tackhead and Little Ax with its vocal samples, and of “Stoned Immaculate” in its extreme airiness. The versions of “Higher and Higher” and especially “Emmanuel” impress with their technical reduction. This fantastic final track is supplemented on the re-issue by three extended loop mixes that broaden the enjoyment a bit. Here, passages from the master were apparently looped and reworked more or less creativelydubbt, so not much new is happening, just a little more. The fourth and most meaningful supplement is a remix of “Dubvionist” Felix Wolter. Based on “Greater David”, it is a bit out of the sound picture with a lot of tape saturation, but it forms a worthy conclusion. But these four new versions do not change the impulse to put on “Mellow and Colly” immediately afterwards. Because of the slim Scientist mixes, which have less overdubs and gave more space to the vocals (including Junior Reid and Big Youth) in the discomix process, the entire Soundclash experience becomes really three-dimensional. They also know this at Echo Beach. The re-issue should come in the new year.

This is an album from the outskirts of Dub. Adjacent regions include beatless ambient music and a subgenre with the lovely name of doom jazz. Kevin Richard Martin is somewhat at home in all of these areas, making music and producing there and beyond in various contexts (including Techno Animal, Zonal, King Midas Sound, G36). He is involved in sound system culture primarily under the name The Bug. But just like his American cousin Bill Laswell, it doesn't matter what he tackles within his wide range of interests (including drone, post metal, dancehall): it is inevitably permeated by the experience of the Dub, which was first conveyed to the Brexilant, who now lives in Brussels, personally by Jah Shaka and the Disciples. His output has now grown into an entire network of development strands and collaborations, the complete presentation of which would require an organizational chart in DIN A1 format. In “Black” (Intercranial) various of his interests come together on a 76 minute long album, which will hopefully one day also be available in vinyl form. The hypothetical A-side would then probably contain two numbers loosely labeled “Ambient Dub without drums”. The melancholic arrangements evoke the Berliners' slowest moments Dub-Schmiede Rhythm & Sound, the enigmatic UK producer Burial but also the Münster snail-tempo band Bohren and the Club of Gore. Especially since Martin uses a double bass for grounding in the low frequency range. The individual sound events are placed so sparingly that each one trembles with tension. Additional suspense is created, especially in the 14-minute title track, by the relatively complex chord progressions for Martin's standards. This has its origins in the concept of the album, which is entirely dedicated to Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011. The music is, in a sense, composed around the empty space left by the singer. Interestingly, the distance to their actual band sound, which we associate primarily with the lush retro soul of Mark Ronson and the New York Dap Kings, could hardly be greater. Amy's "spirit" lives more in the bass notes and the chords wafting over them, in which the shape of her songs emerges without ever fully revealing themselves. Martin captures the essence of her music slowly. Like a painter who broadens a detailed detail of an oil painting with one stroke of the brush, Martin here stretches harmony, rhythm and melody into a broad band of swaying traces in which a very unique beauty is revealed. The result is slo-mo soul music that is second to none. Only in the fourth track “Love You Much, Love Too Much” does a drum beat sound after all this minimalistic hypnotic pulsation, which of course also indulges in slowness at 50 bpm. The tone is also set by more powerfully applied synthesizer colors and, if I'm not mistaken, by Martin himself on his “first” instrument, the saxophone. This would roughly define the sound parameters between which “Black” moves. Like many of the EPs and albums that Martin has released, especially since the Covid era, it initially sounds like introspective music for those slowed down moments at home. Individual parts – as a warmup, intro, outro or in the middle (suggestion: “Camden Crawling”) certainly work in the club, and are designed for exactly that. Kevin Martin is a sound fetishist, and nowhere does his obsession with frequencies, vibrations and full-body bass massage unfold for us consumers more clearly than on a capable sound system.

Word has already got around that the new African Head Charge album "Trip to Bolgatanga" (On-U Sound) is not entirely of one piece compared to the overpowering early work. That was to be expected. The five to six reference albums, which were recently re-released as a box set, are the gold standard that this long-term project itself has set. All of them, up to and including "Voodoo of the Godsent" (2011), are avowedly studio projects, bi-polar sonic experiments with the drumming of Bonjo I as root work and grounding, and as a second powerhouse: Sherwood's reservoir of sounds, riddims, gear and mix maneuvers as well as his extended circle of friends. In addition, however, there have always been projects and phases in which the sound level leaned more towards Bonjo: AHC live, for example, when Sherwood wasn't at the mixer, or the trip to the Acid Jazz label, which gave Bonjo the opportunity to try himself as a bandleader . The albums have a rather apocryphal status, because the so-called "sci-fi" and "industrial" elements, which were popular at the time, were left out. The same applies to the Noah House of Dread project, which was set up specifically for Bonjo's Roots research and which I found to be ethnic kitsch at the time. Today I judge more mildly and recognize it as an early and completely understandable attempt by Bonjo to swim artistically free. But in all of his works, and this also applies to “A Trip to Bolgatanga”, his respective relationship to Africa is reflected. Born in Jamaica, Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah initially grew up in his grandmother's Rasta camp in Clarendon. He reluctantly followed his parents to England, where he established himself as a drummer in the XNUMXs, eventually crossing paths with Adrian Sherwood.

At the time of the first AHC album, for him as for Sherwood, "Africa" ​​was still more of an abstract idea, a dreamland like in Brian Eno and David Byrne's album "My Life in a Bush of Ghosts" to which AHC was a British answer wanted to. They drew inspiration from the UK's immigrant culture and diaspora perspective rather than their own real-world experiences. It was still called “Visions of a Psychedelic Africa” in 2005, but a lot had happened in the meantime. Several trips to Ghana led Bonjo to stay there for longer and longer periods and now his life has completely changed there. Africa became more and more of a place of longing to reality for him. After a period on the coast, he has now moved inland, to the Upper Region near the Burkina Faso border. The climate here is drier, Muslims are in the majority compared to the Christian south, and the culture of the Frafra ethnic group dominates musically: on the one hand, a very unique form of gospel, mostly sung by women, and on the other hand, the youth culture of the Kologo -Bards. These are the griots of the area, they accompany their singing with two-stringed lutes and are a must at every wedding and funeral.
King Ayisoba is the first to build an international career out of this grassroots culture, and he opens the album in his tried and true manner. This has no sonic precedent on any AHC album, save for Mutabaruka's guest appearance on Vision of a Psychedelic Africa (2005), an album where the schism we are dealing with here was already beginning to emerge. Bass and percussions are reduced to the most reserved here, and the mix also leaves it at two or three reverb tails. The following instrumental "Accra" obviously wants to be a tribute to the capital and to a certain extent imitates its more urban sound, which is dominated by Afrobeats. Of course, it relates to the normally electronically smooth-coiffed original in the same way that Sherwood tunes like “Zero Zero One” did to dancehall reggae at the time. Clarinet player Steve Beresford unobtrusively closes a circle to the early work. His (tonal) clarinet is also there when the album finally reaches familiar territory in the third song: "Push Me Pull You" sways majestically at a slower pace and would have fitted on any of the classic albums. “I Chant Too” keeps the sluggish groove and of course the chanting, but conjures up a weird New Age vibe via the keyboard that makes the track the slackest of the first side. Because with "Asalatua" the A-side closes with an uptempo chaser that awakens pleasant memories of "In Pursuit of Shashamane Land".

Between these four (!) poles – local dialects, classic AHC sound, pop experiment and failed ballad – the game with variations is repeated on the second side. The album has a stylistic spectrum that is more reminiscent of a "Pay It All Back" sampler. However, this also makes the selection of songs for DJs compatible with other genres from Afrobeat to House to Reggae and Dubstep... and in individual cases also for the deep listening session. Compared to two failures, I find it much more annoying that the good numbers also stay under four minutes and therefore hardly have the opportunity to develop. Here we have to wait for the following remixes and B-sides. In terms of production, the album is a bit more versatile than it's good for, but it's also very subtle and permeable. The fact that the familiar house musicians Doug Wimbish, Skip McDonald and Crocodile are there is hardly noticeable in the music, their contributions are so minimalistic and pointed and sometimes simply technical - possibly signs of aging. Above all, the productive tension between Bonjo and Sherwood as songwriters and song designers continues on the album, which after a while on an equal footing has now turned in Bonjo's side. Africa is now a very real thing for him and all the songs reflect that in a musical, philosophical or social way. This also applies to his own drumming, which was once based on Nyabinghi patterns, while he has now also adopted the diverse West African dialects. In this respect, too, "Africa" ​​is far more concrete for him than it was at the time of "Off the Beaten Track". Of course, apart from King Aysoba, half the neighborhood in Bolgatanga was involved in the project. African Head Charge is Bonjo's project in 2023, we hear his new home through his ears and drums. And like any good storyteller, it always pays to just listen.

It's now 2023, which has always been the year of production on Echo Beach releases, and number 23 is the latest installment in the King Size compilation series Dub. The cover of King Size Dub 23 (Echo Beach) is one of the most beautiful of the series: So here we see the legendary Echo Beach through the eyes of the Slovenian artist ROK, who also worked for Ariwa. Young and old of all backgrounds celebrate the Sound System under palm trees, and the house saint, King Tubby, leans smiling in the doorway. So what does the sound bring? First of all, a number of old acquaintances: The noise shapers, which were actually dissolved, surprisingly open with a lively one Dub-House track. Right after that it gets deep with Mexican Dubwiser, one of the most interesting current label acts. With a humorous and effective version of JJ Cale's coke classic "Cocaine", sung by Earl 16, the first of numerous cover versions is heard. A good half of the tracks are interpretations of (mainly) pop, new wave and some reggae classics, a field to which the label has devoted itself with particular dedication in the last ten years. It is understandable that this maximalism provokes certain signs of weariness and wear and tear on the consumer side. But at this beach party, the celebrities mingle freely with the ordinary folk, and it's worth listening to the party talk more closely. With "Armagideon Time" Willie Williams' timeless apocalyptic is once again updated. Seanie T and Al's versiondubb is based melodically on that of The Clash, Rob Smith's Onedrop Remix leads him rhythmically back to his Jamaican roots on the one hand, but doesn't shy away from string pizzicato. The Clash raise their heads once more with "Guns of Brixton", minimalistically reduced to drums&bass by Mannaseh, and recorded by the Swiss Dub Spencer & Trance Hill, who have developed their very own kind of reggae populism (and probably drilled the flea with the cover versions into their ears for the first time in their Hamburg label). At this point, what was simply too much of a good thing and sometimes mediocre over the length of the album is properly portioned. The musical highlight is the version by Dub Syndicate's "Mafia" feat. Bim Sherman, a tune that doesn't seem to go far wrong. In addition, Misled Convoy meets Uncle Fester on Acid not only provide the most bottomless dropout moment, but also the connection to the sister-in-law On-U-Sound label. Finally, for highlights of their own kind, author Alan Moore with a Spoken Word contribution and Kid Loco with a version of Kraftwerk's "Robots", the latter a tasty foretaste of upcoming events on this beach. A chilling counterexample is "Dub to be Wild” by RE-201 ft. Awa Fall. A Steppenwolf im Dub-Pelz, even a Zion track remix can't save this failed joke. And Paolo Baldini simply chose a somewhat weak track for his collaboration with LAB. Otherwise, Volume 23 is among the highlights of the longest-serving Dubseries in German-speaking countries. Not just because of the magic of numbers, but thanks to the broad spectrum of voices and opinions and a just-right balance between the familiar and the new, experiments and mainstream maneuvers. More women in the line-up than on the cover would be desirable for the future. And fewer rock songs.