The Alien Dub Orchestra: Play the Breadminster Songbook

It doesn't happen often that you get a DubListening to the album, one immediately realizes: A door is opening here that one didn't even know existed until just now.The Alien Dub Orchestra Plays the Breadminster Songbook“(Alien Transistor) is exactly that kind of moment. For me, it’s the strangest, most unusual, and probably most innovative.” Dub-publication of recent years – and an impressive testament to how far Dub This is possible if one frees oneself from traditions, production dogmas, and expectations.
The project itself is already extraordinary. The alien Dub Orchestra is a mixed group of Bavarian musicians – including some from the circles of The Notwist and G.Rag y los hermanos Patchekos. Their approach: the songs of British Dub-to record Elijah Minnelli's eccentric songs from his so-called Breadminster Songbook with a full band. Minnelli, who otherwise – by his own account – assembles his "frayed, melancholic hymns to his homeland" on his computer in a damp basement, was himself taken aback by the idea. "Real professionals playing something you've pieced together yourself – it's overwhelming," he says. And indeed: His quirky music suddenly sounds as he perhaps always intended it to.
The album works its way through Minnelli's cumbia-infused DubReggae – but instead of digital loops and a rough-mix atmosphere, there's a fully instrumented, almost anarchically colorful band lineup: guiro, accordion, melodica, sousaphone, trumpet, and all sorts of percussion. It sounds as if a Munich backyard collective rediscovered old Studio One recordings, European folk tradition, and South American rhythms simultaneously and simply mashed them together. Weird? Yes. But above all, mind-blowing.
Tracks like "Vine and Fig Tree" demonstrate what happens when you suddenly shape Minnelli's enigmatically beautiful melodies from wood and metal instead of bits and bytes: The harmonies become tangible, the bass (this time as a wailing sousaphone line!) gains that physical warmth that only real air columns and real hands can produce. With other tracks—such as "Slats"—you almost wonder if Minnelli's original wasn't subconsciously intended for this band. It sounds so natural, so unique, so complete.
And then comes the second part of the album – the real mindfuck: the Dub-Versions! A circular metamorphosis that finally places the project in the experimental realm beyond... Dub-conventions catapulted. For these DubMinnelli brought in sound artist Raimund Wong, who works with an anarchic setup of tape machines and effects chains. Everything was mixed in one take: Minnelli on the faders, Wong with filters and effects that Dub break down, distort, liquefy.
"Pundit Dub“ is perhaps the best example – a hypnotic, droning trip that dissolves into psychedelic wisps and sounds as if the entire album is gliding through a portal into another dimension. It's not a classic Dub and nobody wants to be one. It is Dub as an idea, as a collapse, as a radical opening of form.
Ultimately, "Play the Breadminster Songbook" is nothing less than a love letter to Dub as a living principle. Folk, Cumbia, DubAvant-garde – everything collides, overlaps, and merges without ever becoming arbitrary. The music feels like a constant transformation, an open dialogue between Minnelli's digital intimacy and the analog exuberance of a band that clearly revels in disregarding the rules.
I would conclude: This album shows how far Dub Since King Tubby arrived – and that it's still possible to stretch and bend him, yet still let his core shine through. "Play the Breadminster Songbook" is quirky, bold, playful, and visionary. For me, the most innovative DubA project of recent years. A masterpiece of the unconventional.