On Ireland, the green island in the Atlantic, lives a "Dubling” out Dublin named Elias Zaidan. As a producer, sound engineer and artist, he calls himself Sabab. The Arabic word sabab means "cause, initial spark, impulse". the inside Dublin-born half-Lebanese, half-Irish consequently draws inspiration from both cultures. Certainly Sabab could have produced beautiful Irish jigs or Lebanese dabkehs, both folk dances danced 'in a row'. Or if he had become a chef, he would certainly have prepared a sheep's stomach stuffed with sumac and the finest oriental ingredients. But we are wasting our precious time, because luckily Sabab has taken a completely different artistic direction. In addition to avant-garde, electronic, jazz and film music, the sound from Jamaica is very special Dub his great passion, of which he gives us a remarkable demonstration here. "Sabab presents Revival Style“ is his debut work for the Lion Charge label and the title of the album says it all, because already “Wild Style Dub' leads us in the right direction. The eight in Dubliner Gussie Edwards Studio convincingly show the talent of the hitherto unknown sound engineer, who played the old-schoolDub-Sound of the late 70s, early 80s skilfully captured on this nostalgic musical journey and transferred to the present. Sabab convincingly demonstrates his quality at the mixing desk and his very special preference for spacydubbig sounds. A rich bass, drums echoing from the deepest dungeon - like in Scientist's best "King Tubby's Sessions" times, hissing hi-hats and decelerated rhythms float through space and time. The psychedelic sounds created by reverberation, echo and tubbyesque sound loops sound wonderfully nostalgic, yet are stylishly furnished with a modern touch. Finally, the only question I have is whether Sabab recorded the album alone or with a band, which I assume is more the case with “Revival Style”. Unfortunately, there is no information about this in the credits, but that doesn't detract from the album overall.
Finally: A beautiful musical journey into the legendary late 1970s era of Jamaica, when flyers, steppers and rockers still set the tone on the island.
3 responses to “Sabab presents Revival Style”
Very beautiful & a pleasure. It's also available as a stream on all common platforms: https://songwhip.com/sabab/revival-style
Hello everybody!
The album by Sabab is also worth listening to, especially because of the (felt) varied effects on the snare and toms, but I beg your indulgence that (once again) the BassLines don't give me that much and thus the whole Dub likely to be forgotten again.
At least for me. But there is something else that struck me about Saba. The other “things” that I checked on Spotify sometimes fascinate me a lot. But it feels like they are almost going in the right direction DubStep, for which I really only have contempt. Nevertheless, the "Riddims" sound so wonderfully enraptured and slightly off track that I think it's fantastic again.
Reminds me of one of my favoritesDubAlbums ( Twilight Circus "The Dub Project part 2"). In my opinion, the “riddims” come from a very deep basement. I spontaneously think of “prehistorical DubBut there's a whole lot more of such "weird" things.
And Saba follows on quite well, albeit with a pretty brutal computer bass, I think. I don't think I can justify that rationally, but it feels that way to me.
I call this style "DubStepDub“……………..?
I also think it's a pity that there are no (innovative) "inspirations" from Irish folklore. An "Irish accordion" might have made the "thing" a little more exciting for me. Or did I miss that when skipping through the album?
Now you could ask me what cheek I allow myself to want to judge an album by skipping through it. I'm not judging it, and I've actually always used the "skip through" method to select my discs. Whether a BassLine grabs me or not is a matter of seconds for me. If in the end I "turned away" too early and missed one or the other magic, then I didn't deserve anything else.
So long …………………………… lemmi aka “Darth Vader”
The artwork is based on Uriah Heep's 1973 live album.