The Music
The Music
Virgin
Last November, a little-known four-piece dance combo from Leeds, England, called The Music, released its eponymous album in the UK. Since then successful tours of Europe and Japan have seen record sales soar and the UK's leading music rag, New Musical Express, dubbed it "the most important group since Oasis."
Signed by Capitol Records in the US, the album was released there two weeks ago, where with The Music's ability to transform the gnarliest of guitar riffs into a dance melody looks set to see the corking debut repeat its previous successes in the Americas.
With the help of some serious effects' pedals and a vocalist who has no trouble hitting the high notes, The Music fill the void that sits between guitar band and dance combo. A blend of the modern art-school and traditional four-bar rock, The Music's debut boasts the percussion of Southern Death Cult, the guitar jangle of the Verve and the musical smarts of Coldplay.
Whilst predominately a guitar-driven dance album, when the electronica does take over, The Music maintains its composure. Not even a Hawkwind-sized flurry of guitar and electronica loaded noise can deter the band from creating music that is as acceptable at a dance party as it is in a smoke-filled bar.
Asian Dub Foundation
Enemy of the Enemy
EMI
Regrouping early last year after the departure of its main MC and almost two years of inactivity, Asian Dub Foundation (ADF) is back with a vengeance on its latest studio album, Enemy of the Enemy. An album on which the combo's long-term members and its recent additions, MCs Spex, Aktarvata, and Cezvee create havoc with basic reggae rhythms and hip-hop beats.
ADF makes full use of its now trademark hybrid combination of punk/rock, ambient, dance, trip-hop, rap, Bengali folk songs and other assorted South Asian musical influences to create an album that, while arguably in much the same musical vein as previous releases, still manages to sound fresh.
Steve Chandra Savale's unique style of cranking up the distortion and tuning his guitar strings to one single note to create a sitar effect, albeit a noisy one, and Aniruddha Das's booming bass riffs and hard-edged vocals lead the band through 12 groove powered tunes. And all of these tracks simply ooze a political conscience.
Kicking in with Fortress Europe, a dub/rap/rock/reggae fused tune that waxes lyrical about refugees and asylum seekers having the right to live in Europe, ADF are out to impress from the very outset and throw up a non-stop wall of dub, South Asian and electronica fused sounds.
Domestic violence, the CIA, life in urban housing-projects, the state of the post 911 world and prison riots in Brazil also feature as topics of ADF's hybrid musical conversation on an album that is easily on par with, and as innovative as the combo's much lauded 1998 release, Rafi's Revenge.
Kollected
The Best of Kula Shaker
Columbia
While there can be no denying the originality of Kula Shaker's blend of Eastern mysticism, psychedelia-soaked guitar and swirling-organ, the band is best remembered for the fact that singer/guitarist Crispian Mills hung out with some rather odd people.
In 1996 the band scored a UK top ten hit with Tattva -- a tune which saw the hippie-chic revivalists adapting an ancient Sanskrit text into a chorus. That same year the combo's debut album, K, became the UK's fastest selling debut.
Before the band had had time to digest its runaway success Mills was accused of being a neo-Nazi. Although denying charges that his previous band, Objects of Desire, had rubbed shoulders with the UK's extreme right-wing group The British Movement, the fate of Mills' Kula Shaker had been sealed.
While the music press lay divided over the band's 1999 release, Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts -- with some reviews lauding it as conceptually brilliant, while others as abstractly forgettable -- the record buying public was to have the final say. Album sales froze and after leaving the UK on a somewhat muted attempt to conquer the US, Kula Shaker decided to call it a day shortly thereafter.
Nearly three years since Kula Shaker's demise, Columbia Records has released the band's sole "Greatest Hits" to date. Entitled Kollected, the album features 16 of the Shakers' tunes and includes the band's early South Asian flavored hits, Tattva and Govinda, as well as the popular B-side, Hey Dude.
While the album proves that the band was certainly creative, this is a collection that, like too many of Kula Shaker's tunes, leaves an interestingly odd after taste, but no lasting impression.
Sly and the Revolutionaries
Black Ash Dub
Sanctuary
Sly Dunbar might have set up the foundations of Jamaican drumming in the early 1970s while performing with artists such as Black Uhuru, The Mighty Diamonds and his longtime pal, Peter Tosh, but many feel Dunbar's finest moment was his 1980, Black Ash Dub.
Originally released on the reggae/dub label Trojan, the album saw new life breathed into it late last month, when Sanctuary re-released the groundbreaking drummer and dub guru's tribute to his favorite pastimes.
Dunbar's third album of dub instrumentals under the name Sly & the Revolutionaries since splitting from Tosh and setting up his own label, Taxi Productions, boasts a great lineup as well as some truly memorable dub tunes.
Joining drummer Dunbar on Black Ash Dub are Robbie Shakespeare on bass, Ansel Collins on organ and Bingy Bunny on guitar. All of who were mixed together by infamous dub-reggae producer, Jah Thomams.
Each tune is a tribute to a narcotic, and each has its unique flavor. Collie boasts a carnival-like feel with its brass and a loopy sense of dub, whilst Acapulco Gold sees Dunbar toying with ska styled dub reggae and White Rum reeks of Lee "Scratch" Perry and his Upsetters at their most sedated and numbest.
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