Category: Review

It was that Dub Syndicate, which brought me on the trail of for the first time in 1982 with the album "Pounding System" produced by Adrian Sherwood Dub sat. The house band of On-U-Sound, with Style Scott on drums and Flabba Holt on bass. Two outstanding musicians who also formed the backbone of the legendary Roots Radics. Scott recorded over 20 albums on behalf of the Syndicate (the Roots Radics recordings are uncounted), recorded the tracks with Flabba in Jamaica, then added Over in London in collaboration with Sherwooddubs and finally left the same Dubs mix. Now lies "Hard food“(Echo Beach) proposed the final album of the Dub Syndicate. There won't be another one because Scott was murdered two months ago in his home in Jamaica. A tragic event that makes a sober review of his last work impossible. So it doesn't surprise me that the first track already makes me feel sad because “Sound Collision” sounds one hundred percent Dub Syndicate trademark sound, as if there were no unbelievable 32 years between “Pounding System” and “Hard Food”. At position 4, “Love Addis Ababa” is a melancholy instrumental with gentle winds and a beautiful cello playing. A wonderful one and thanks to its instrumentation for Dub Also a very unusual piece that shows that Scott was still full of musical ideas and would have offered us a lot more exciting music in the future. “Gipsy Magic” is equally beautiful, contrasting the powerful reggae beat with the wistful melodies of a violin. I am very moved by the emotional power of this music. Style, the stylist, has asked a few very select singing guests to join in: Lee Perry (okay, the singing is to be understood relatively), Bunny Wailer, U-Roy, who is here on a version of the "Police in Helicopter" -Riddims toasted and a guy named Magma adding some dancehall vibes. As a bonus there are three more high-class ones Dubs. The crowning glory of a very nice album that is a lot of fun and yet sad.

Uwe Lehr, the man behind Razoof, stands for a very exciting, extremely modern and cosmopolitan understanding of reggae. On his last year's album Jahliya sound He presented twelve outstanding productions, all of which were equally characterized by open mind and solid reggae groves. A great album. Now he lays with Razoof: Jahliya - Dubs & remixes (Poets Club) the matching ones DubVersions before. However, this is not a classic one DubAlbum, but about remixes that Uwe Lehr has collected from all over the world and all musical worlds. So he delivers Dubvisionist from Hanover z. B. a terrific Steppers remix, Cocotaxi from Sweden pimps Jaquee's already very lively song "Life is a Journey" on Dancehall and USDubstep master Rob Paine lets Lutan Fyah's song mutate into exactly what he's best at: Dubstep. He measures himself against Berlins Dubstep counterpart samsa, who goes to work here with a massive electric bass. Dub-House can be heard from Salz from Cologne, who once again prove how perfect the aesthetics of House are Dub-Reggae can apply. However, my favorites are the two remixes by Eleven55, which are somewhere between minimalDubtechno and Dubstep and yet know how to preserve the reggae charm of the original. Since some songs and some rhythms have been remixed several times, it is also extremely exciting to compare how much the original material changes in the hands of remixers from other genres. But despite all the differences in the actors and styles: The album is a solid unit, safely resting on an unshakable reggae foundation that can easily handle even heavy beats from other genres. Hence my dear ones Dub-Friends, here you get enough familiar things to feel at home and enough new things to have an exciting musical experience. Open your ears!

The Senior all stars seem to like conceptual projects. When the instrumental band from Münster released their recordings in 2010 to a crowd of international DubRemixers, they still followed a very common concept. When they - excited about the result - started doing the DubTo replay s live on stage - with each musician mixing himself - and finally to make a studio album out of it, the concept became much more idiosyncratic. The newest concept - Verbalized and Dubbed (Skycap) - is thought even further around the corner: “How about if we had our tracks externally again dubLet practice, but this time with singing? ”Uh? Okay, got it. As in 2010, the Senior Allstars sent their instrumental material all over the world: first to vocal artists who knitted a song and then on Dub-Mixer that adds music and singing to vocal-Dubs connected - followed by a classical instrumental one Dub to mix from it. The result is a work with 16 tracks: Part 1 is a vocalDub-Album, Part 2 a pure one Dub-Album. All right? If not, it doesn't matter, because in the end what counts is what comes out at the back. And that is - how could it be otherwise with the seniors - great. The eight songs are all beautiful, catchy compositions. I particularly like the contributions that do not come from the reggae cosmos, like z. B. Tokunbo's soul vocals or Pitshu's Latin American lyrics over a bouncing ska beat. Somehow that fits particularly well with the live sound of the Senior Allstars, which is slightly reminiscent of jazz - and could be a very promising idea for another concept album. Since the vocal part did not belong to the original material but from the Dub-Remixer was added, the music and vocals permeate each other in the mix much more organically than is usual with classic reggae songs. The separation between foreground and “backing” is dissolved, both merge into a wonderfully harmonious-musical amalgam.

Small fragments of the song also remain with the Dubs received in the second part of the album. As irreversible Dub-Purist, I love the "Dubbed “in Verbalized and Dubbed especially. The sound of the all stars is amazing again. The fantastic Dub-Mixes (including by Umberto Echo, Dubvisionist, Dubmatix, Victor Rice) combine to form a wonderful flow into which the listener can let himself fall, to listen to this or that instrument, to feel the groove or to follow an echo through space and time. Rare that Dubs are as multilayered, multidimensional and full of atmosphere as with the all stars. The vocal element now enriches the sound even more. Keep it up, dear seniors. I'm looking forward to your next concept.