Category: Review

What a dystopian title: “The Collapse of Everything” (On-U Sound). Adrian Sherwood has named his new solo work this way, and after 13 years, he presents an album that lives up to its title with almost brutal consistency. Dub Anyone expecting – and with Sherwood, this is not unjustified – will first rub their ears. The sonic cosmos that the On-U-Sound mastermind creates here is far from anything commonly referred to as "Dub“ And yet that is exactly what it is: Dub in spirit. Dub as an attitude. Dub as a method of breaking up and reorganizing.
"Survival & Resistance" in 2012 already clearly demonstrated that Sherwood was forging his own path with his solo works. "The Collapse of Everything," however, definitively departs from familiar paths. What remains is the deconstructivist production style: layers of live recordings, effects, fragments, and rhythms that aren't concerned with groove, but rather with atmosphere, contrast, and disruption. The sound is often off-kilter, at times even atonal, at times almost repellent. Sherwood doesn't seem to want to please anyone here, but rather delivers a dark poem about loss, transience, and resistance.
The deaths of two close friends—Mark Stewart and Keith LeBlanc—helped shape the album. It's not sentimental, but rather permeated by a quiet, blunt respect for the inevitable. In tracks like the title track "The Collapse of Everything," a sense of disillusionment hovers through the expansive soundscapes, underpinned by percussion, dissonant pads, and recurring, barely tangible melodic fragments. The widescreen sound feels like film music—not that of a blockbuster, but that of a dystopian arthouse film. Tarkovsky meets technoir.
Sherwood wouldn't be Sherwood if he relied on his own genius. As always, he surrounds himself with an exquisite ensemble: Doug Wimbish provides the low frequencies, Ivan "Celloman" Hussey contributes strings, Mark Bandola on guitar, Chris Joyce on drums – an illustrious group with whom Sherwood pours his experimental ideas into organic forms. Alex White's woodwinds and keys lend the sound additional depth, at times an almost jazz-like expanse. It is these subtle contributions that prevent "The Collapse of Everything" from sinking into mere gloom. Instead, something shimmers there – not light, but an awareness. "I'm not trying to please anyone but myself," Sherwood says of the album. This attitude characterizes every bar. DubThe idea is not musical, but structural: breaking things up, reassembling them, shifting meanings. Like a musical palimpsest, sounds, memories, and references overlap. If you listen closely, you'll discover traces of On-U Sound, of "Becoming a Cliché," of Lee Perry and Bim Sherman—but all filtered through a dissonant, dystopian sound aesthetic.
It's noticeable that Sherwood has worked for artists like Spoon, Panda Bear, and Halsey in recent years: He's very familiar with the language of indie, pop, and avant-garde electronica. But he doesn't use it to be accessible. On the contrary: The "Collapse of Everything" is a rejection of accessibility. It's radical, subjective, almost hermetic—and consistent in that.
The “Collapse of Everything” is definitely not an album for Dubheads looking for a bass upgrade. It's a statement. A demanding, unruly, bulky piece of music that refuses any function. You could say: Adrian Sherwood has Dub elevated to a free art form – freed from any functional definition. Anyone who wants to hear how Dub can sound when he breaks away from his roots, from having to function in the sound system or on the dance floor, from any audience expectations and generally from everything that we Dub love so much – and yet somehow Dub remains, will find here a fascinating, multi-layered, uncomfortable work.

Sometimes, when the fog hangs over the harbor and a muffled bass wafts through the Speicherstadt from the inside of a club, you think you can hear it – the echo of that fictitious dream beach that Martha & The Muffins sang about in their 1980 song "Echo Beach." What was once just a metaphor has long since become a reality: Echo Beach is in Hamburg. Here, on the banks of the Elbe, Nicolai Beverungen founded a label in 1995 that has since then shaped the Dub-Sound in this country. To mark its 30th anniversary, the label is now returning with the compilation "King size Dub – Hamburg" (Echo Beach) back to its origins – and impressively shows that Dub in this city is more than a style: it is a soundtrack, an attitude, a history.
When Echo Beach launched the first King Size Dubcompilation, it was a statement. While the UKDub in small sound system communities, Nicolai translated the sound for a continental audience and incorporated his own punk past. Compilations from New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, Jamaica and the USA quickly followed, as did reissues and reinterpretations, which Dub associated with dance, punk, minimal and pop. The label catalogue became an open archive of the global Dub-events – without losing sight of the local scene.
Because Hamburg was part of this movement from the very beginning: With formations like Dub Me Ruff, Dub Division, Di Irie and Arfmann's projects (Turtle Bay Country Club, Kastrierte Philosophen) there was already a vital scene in the 90s that was not Jamaican or British Dub copied, but thought further. This is exactly where “King Size Dub – Hamburg” – and brings all these threads together in a dense, 33-track compendium.
This compilation isn't just a simple retrospective. It doesn't just document; it curates, updates, and connects.
The opener – a hypnotic discoDub by Station 17, mixed by DJ Koze – shows how the classic Dub-approach (reduction, space, rhythm) meets current production methods. The fact that Udo Lindenberg and Jan Delay meet on the Reeperbahn (but only on the vinyl LP) is more than a marketing gimmick: It is a reminiscence of the city's pop cultural identity – dissolved into echo and reverb by Guido Craviero, the live sound magician of Seeed and Peter Fox. Matthias Arfmann, one of the founding fathers of German Dub, performs with his son Chassy. It's a nice analogy: Just as the Echo Beach label connects musical generations, so do its protagonists. Lee "Scratch" Perry is represented, as is Elbtonal Percussion, whose Max Romeo cover, in collaboration with Prottassov, looks beyond the box in an avant-garde way. Even politics has a place: TC Sunshine's agit-Dub about Nikel Pallat's legendary appearance on a TV talk show in 1971 (during which a table was broken) sounds like a piece of acoustic memory culture. In "Die Mieten sind zu hoch" (The rents are too high), Knarf Rellöm Arkestra denounces the social reality of many big cities – and is Dub Spencer & Trance Hill from Switzerland congenial in Dub Here, music and milieu combine to create an urban soundscape that extends far beyond Hamburg.
Hamburg's scene thrives not only on its sound systems, but also on the permeability of genres. This is particularly evident on this compilation: Heinz Strunk brings you "Black Jets" Dub“ Puberty in a Nutshell, Jacques Palminger & Kings of DubChaka Khan rocks gender with Hanseatic nonchalance. Prince Istari and Legoluft deliver Dub in the tradition of the DIY spirit, and with Kein Hass Da (the Bad Brains cover in German) a circle closes between punk, Dub and Subversion. Major artists like Deichkind, Erobique, Sam Ragga Band, Fettes Brot, and Goldenen Zitronen are also represented – not as stars, but as part of a collective that defines the diversity of this scene. It's the sound of a city that has never been defined – especially not musically.
What is “King Size Dub – Hamburg” so beautiful is the symbiosis of retrospective and vision. It shows what Echo Beach has stood for since 1995: the constant re-contextualization of a genre that finds its strength in its willingness to experiment. The label has Dub not only imported, but also shaped, adapted, and formed – right up to the celebrated tributes to The Clash, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Grace Jones, and the Ramones. The city where it all began gets its DubHomage – raw, playful, deep, permeated with traces, voices, and stories. Hamburg is not just a backdrop, but a source of sound. And Echo Beach remains the beacon on the horizon.

With “Full Circle” (Dubmission) presents Tor.Ma in Dub A work that is both uncompromising and concentrated – and that unfolds an unexpected force, especially through its opening. The first two tracks, "Lights On" and "Earth Calling," mark a radical moment in the Mexican producer's work: two merciless stepper monoliths that combine with the playful psydubimage that is often attributed to him. There is no room for shimmering soundscapes or spherical gimmicks – what discharges instead is pure sound system energy. The bass drum marches through the tracks with almost brutal directness, stoic and relentless, while an unmodulated, deep black sub-bass fills the room and shakes the pit of the stomach. It is these two pieces that have the potential to be on every Dub-session to generate collective head-nods and a series of rewinds. No superfluous effects, no ornamental accessories—just groove, punch, and an almost technoid minimalism reminiscent of early UK steppers, but with a dark, digital edge familiar from the Alpha & Omega orbit.
As the EP progresses, Tor.Ma returns to Dub Then back to more familiar territory. The remaining three pieces open up atmospherically, become softer, leaving room for esoteric melodies and psychedelic, shimmering sound textures. Here, what producer Hernández describes in interviews as his creative origins resonates again: an affinity for inner sound spaces, for meditative states, for consciousness-expanding sound design. Yet even in these tracks, the rhythm remains clear and grounded – the play with space and frequency always remains in the service of the Dub.
“Full Circle” is more than just another EP in the catalog of Tor.Ma in Dub – it is a striking break, a deliberately placed accent. The unbridled energy of the first two tracks acts like a drumbeat, showing the artist in a new light: raw, direct, reduced to the essentials. Without frills, without reassurance, with maximum emphasis. What follows is not a slowdown, but a deliberate change of perspective. The remaining pieces open other doors, leaving room for depth and contemplation, for the dreamy, floating side that one finds with Tor.Ma in Dub previously primarily associated. Yet, precisely in contrast to the brutal opening numbers, even these quieter tones gain in poignancy. Thus, "Full Circle" succeeds in uniting two poles—power and breadth, body and spirit—and thereby forming a cohesive, tension-filled work.

Dennis Bovell reports with “Wise Music in Dub" (Wise Records) and delivers a Dub-album, which reflects not only his decades of experience, but also his penchant for authentic songs and catchy melodies. For his 72nd birthday, he presents himself – and us – with a collection of eleven DubVersions ranging from soul templates to doo-wop to protest songs – all characterized by a sound that is optimistic, sun-drenched, and cheerful. Quite untypical for Dub: free of heaviness and gloom. Bovell brought an impressive ensemble into the studio – from Papa Dee to Brinsley Forde to Carroll Thompson – and worked on exactly the pieces he himself wanted to play. That he didn't care one bit about current Dub-Trends is the greatest compliment one can pay the album. Its approach has a genuine old-school charm: Bovell plays reggae as if the last 40 years simply hadn't happened. No modular fiddling, no futuristic effects, no typical DubMixing – but handmade rhythms, familiar melodies, lots of singing and a lot of heart and soul. This is precisely why the album seems so credible: “Wise Music In Dub"That doesn't sound like a nostalgic throwback, but rather like a man who doesn't have to pretend. He does what he enjoys, what makes him groove—and what probably also reminds him of the good old days when reggae was still popular in the UK—and he's right in the middle of it all.
Not every track is equally captivating – "You're A Big Girl Now," for example, drifts dangerously close to the edge of kitsch – but it is precisely these bumps that give the album character. Bovell is at his strongest when he relies on his own unique style: when Carroll Thompson Dub-version of Les Fleurs floats when Swizz the Panist makes the steel pans glow or when a simple offbeat suddenly becomes a time machine. "Wise Music In Dub“ is a musical walk through Bovell’s head and heart.

I've been listening to J. Robinson's music for years. Releases on WhoDemSound, various Dubplates, his name keeps popping up. And yet: I know nothing about him. No bio, no interview, no face, no anecdote. Even the internet—usually reliably informative—remains silent. No useful information. No clues. No story. That's unsatisfying, but perhaps also logical. So, all that remains is the music.
And I have to admit, I'm playing it quite often right now. To be more precise: "Dubplates Volume 1“ (Whodemsound). An album that holds no surprises. No stylistic experiments, no new production ideas, no distinctive sound details. UK DigitalDub, as we know it. Warm. Uniform. Functional. And yet I listen to it all the time. I click play. Again and again. I listen to it loudly. Not out of analytical interest, not out of curiosity. But because it's simply there. Because it's working. And because it's working well.
What irritates me about this is that I actually consider myself an open, searching listener. I like experiments. I appreciate the unusual. I enjoy disruption. But there's none of that here. And I enjoy it nonetheless. Because this Dub – so smooth, so unspectacular, so stoic – hits something in me that I otherwise like to ignore: my need for continuity. For repetition. For sound that doesn't impose itself, but simply remains. So I don't listen closely. I don't analyze anything. I let it flow. And I become calm. The bass is there, deep and soft. The percussion clacks along, polyrhythmic, but never hectic. The offbeat chops come as they must. No surprise. No variation. And yet: atmosphere. Lots of atmosphere. When I think about it, I would perhaps put on exactly these tracks if someone asked me what Dub actually is. I wouldn't play any outstanding classic, nor any experimental Dub on the fringes of the genre. But J. Robinson: Dub as a condition."DubSo "Plates Volume 1" isn't an album that demands explanation. It demands to be played. And then again. And then again. Perhaps that's its greatest quality. And perhaps it explains J. Robinson better than any bio could.

Already in autumn 2022, “Augustus Pablo and Rockers All Stars: Lightning and Thunder" a fantastic collection of largely previously unreleased material from the Pablos' archives. Two and a half years later, Augustus Pablo's son Addis once again unearthed some treasures from the Rockers International archives for the French label Only Roots. The title of the vinyl LP "Augustus Pablo: King Tubbys Meets Rockers At 5 Cardiff Crescent, Washington Garden, Kingston" refers unmistakably to the address of the legendary Black Ark Studios. The new album is once again a treasure trove of largely unreleased pieces. The thirteen timeless riddims of the Rockers All Stars are said to have all been recorded at Lee "Scratch" Perry's Black Ark Studio and mixed at King Tubby's. In Goethe's classic, I hear Dr. Faust saying: "I hear the message well, but I lack faith." I feel the same way, because I hardly hear the typical Black Ark sound. On "Tide Rope Dub” Scratch’s craftsmanship is definitely noticeable. Nevertheless, the album delivers Dub-Versions of gems like “Keep a Good Dub” (Immortals: “Why Keep a Good Man Down”), “North Street Dub” (Hugh Mundell: “Run Revolution a Come”), “Home of Dub(Immortals: "A House Is Not a Home") and "Stop Them Jah" feat. Jacob Miller (riddim: "Who Say Jah No Dread"). Also of particular interest are two alternate versions of Pablo's "Unfinished Melody." Some tracks from the LP first appeared, if at all, decades ago on extremely rare, scratched 10-inch releases.
This compilation is not a mere reissue, but rather a collection of extremely rare recordings that have now been made available to a wider audience. I find it significant that the cover features a very young Augustus Pablo with his trademark melodica. However, the melodica is not heard on any of the tracks on this release.

Addendum on July 25.07.2025, XNUMX:
My last sentence is simply wrong! After another intensive listening, I have to revise my statement, because the melodica is in the “Home of Dub” clearly perceived – even if only briefly.

As part of his latest project “Lisabon by Bus”, Bruno Crux has taken the opportunity to indulge his passion for reggae, Dub and roots music to the fullest. His commitment and interest in Caribbean culture began in the late 90s as a drummer in the band Nature alongside Freddy Locks. In 2007, he released the first album by Lisabon by Bus, thus establishing his musical vision, particularly through collaborations with national and international artists. Subsequently, the collective "Fittest of the Fittest" was founded, which is characterized by the use of a completely analog sound system and specializes in presenting an authentic "roots sound."

With his recent album “Lisbon by Bus: Sincretismo", Portuguese drummer and producer Bruno Crux makes an impressive comeback. The mini-album features four instrumental tracks, each followed by one by Sr. Dubong mixed Dub-Version. The pieces combine world music sounds with reggae rhythms. The focus is on the phenomenon of "sincretismo" (sincretism), which arises at the intersection of different cultural and religious influences. The compositions demonstrate a connection from the former "end of the world", the "Finis Terra" in western Brittany, to the ancient mysticism of Axum in northern Ethiopia and from there across the endless Eurasian expanses to Mount Amba Gashen in the Ethiopian region of Amhara. It is a musical journey through various geographical locations, guided by reggae grooves, enriched with sounds from all over the world. The four instrumental pieces "Finisterra", "Aksum", "Eurasia" and "Amba Gashen" symbolize stations on this imaginary journey.
The pieces are instrumented by Bruno Crux on bass, guitars, piano, and percussion; Pedro Mighty Drop on drums and percussion; and Zacky Man on keyboards. Special guests include João "The Rooms" Gonçalves (piano and guzheng on "Finisterra," guzheng on "Aksum"), Ras Kamarada (guitar on "Aksum"), and Freddy Locks (guitar on "Amba Gashen").