There are some people who get on with making interesting and important music year after year, quietly and without show. After a while they become familiar and you don’t pay enough attention, but that doesn’t make what they do any less good.
One person who falls into that category is Adrian Sherwood who has been making left field dub since back in the day (well since 1979 anyway).
Sherwood is a master mixer who carries the tradition of dub masters like King Tubby, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Mad Professor and Mikey Dread forward, but does it from England.
His On-U productions are distinctive, alternative, sometimes great and always interesting.
Sherwood based his philosophy on a quote from Brian Eno about the amazing My Life In The Bush With Ghosts.
“'I had a vision of a psychedelic Africa’… I thought about it, and thought ‘No, what a good idea! Make really trippy African dub’.
And that’s what he has pretty much done for many years.
It’s hard to pick out a few records out of many amazing ones but for those looking for a starting point the first releases are as good as any – the amazing Creation Rebel dub album Starship Africa (where all the dub effects are recorded backwards) and the early recordings with New Age Steppers which are the logical extension of the brilliant Slits Cut album (and featured Ari Up from the Slits) which we have raved about before here. But it would be rude not to also mention brilliant political dub punk with Mark Stewart of The Pop Group (and similarly angry leftist pop from Gary Clail); some truly excellent collaborations with Lee Perry himself (DubSetter is his last great record); the amazing new wave punkfunkdub band Tack>>Head formed from the Sugarhill label rhythm section of LeBlanc, MacDonald and Wimbush (and whose album title Friendly as a Hand Grenade gives a clue to their ethics); the dub blues of Little Axe; and a personal favourite Sharp as a Needle by Barmy Army which might be the best hymn sampling football record ever
But we could go on and on.
Truly alternative reggae. If it is reggae at all.
Sherwood doesn’t rest on his laurels (check out his awesome not very recent Boiler Room mix for an hour of niceness – it features a particularly lovely Sherwood dub of Space Oddity at about 7 minutes that’s worth the effort in itself) and in recent times has worked with the new bass masters like Kode9. But the forthcoming release with Bristol master Pinch sounds particularly worthwhile (I guess the fact the first track they dropped was called Bring Me Weed might give a clue) and a great way to get your 2015 off to a steady rollin’ start…
Still doing it proper style and well worth the investigation if you’re yet to discover him.
-TH
