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Dub Gabriel: Bass Jihad, Azra Records, 2005
www.azrarecords.com
Rating: A
I should not like this as much as I do. My love of interesting sounds is usually tempered by a distaste for noisy or droning sounds. This has some of all three, but the interesting parts prevail, and as I have to admit, it’s all musical. Maybe it was the warm, handsome, intriguing packaging that seduced me; it might have put me in such a great mood that I was ready to accept whatever came from the speakers.
What does come from the speakers is as intriguing as the package. Here we have someone, Dub Gabriel by name, who takes delight in exploring his musical ideas at length and concerns himself more with texture, contrast and rhythm than with melody. So this is not dub reggae; this is dubbish musical adventure informed by reggae.
Okay, but you still want to know what Bass Jihad sounds like. Given the title you expect a swirling, percussive Near East flavor to dominate, which at times is true; in fact the first track delivers exactly that. But the next one plunks us suddenly into an elevator shaft connected to a busy factory floor where the workers clang in rhythm as the foreman drones commands, while nearby some women endlessly practice one segment of one bar of a choral arrangement. That’s what I hear, anyway, and I like it.
Skipping several tracks, we encounter what might be a sitar player riffing away during a party, a woman’s not-quite-laugh intruding from the next room as an orchestra proceeds through its pre-concert tuning routine. Later a church organ competes with an airport next door and a rock drummer in the basement. A lighter tone follows, a tapped rhythm accompanying a keyboardist practicing a bird call in a Greek café with Augustus Pablo on the jukebox. The disc ends with 16 minutes of slowly building sound effects, deep bass, deep chanting, Arabic musical structure, and East Indian percussion to a Nyahbinghi rhythm.
With its creative voice sampling, its smart rhythms, its ambiance by turns claustrophobic and spacey, and its complex musical character, Bass Jihad lends itself to a state of wonderment: what in the world is going on? As you can tell, the answer is definitely not easy, but the challenge it presents to the imagination is thoroughly enjoyable.
www.jahworks.org/music/cd/...5html.html
Dub Gabriel: Bass Jihad, Azra Records, 2005
www.azrarecords.com
Rating: A
I should not like this as much as I do. My love of interesting sounds is usually tempered by a distaste for noisy or droning sounds. This has some of all three, but the interesting parts prevail, and as I have to admit, it’s all musical. Maybe it was the warm, handsome, intriguing packaging that seduced me; it might have put me in such a great mood that I was ready to accept whatever came from the speakers.
What does come from the speakers is as intriguing as the package. Here we have someone, Dub Gabriel by name, who takes delight in exploring his musical ideas at length and concerns himself more with texture, contrast and rhythm than with melody. So this is not dub reggae; this is dubbish musical adventure informed by reggae.
Okay, but you still want to know what Bass Jihad sounds like. Given the title you expect a swirling, percussive Near East flavor to dominate, which at times is true; in fact the first track delivers exactly that. But the next one plunks us suddenly into an elevator shaft connected to a busy factory floor where the workers clang in rhythm as the foreman drones commands, while nearby some women endlessly practice one segment of one bar of a choral arrangement. That’s what I hear, anyway, and I like it.
Skipping several tracks, we encounter what might be a sitar player riffing away during a party, a woman’s not-quite-laugh intruding from the next room as an orchestra proceeds through its pre-concert tuning routine. Later a church organ competes with an airport next door and a rock drummer in the basement. A lighter tone follows, a tapped rhythm accompanying a keyboardist practicing a bird call in a Greek café with Augustus Pablo on the jukebox. The disc ends with 16 minutes of slowly building sound effects, deep bass, deep chanting, Arabic musical structure, and East Indian percussion to a Nyahbinghi rhythm.
With its creative voice sampling, its smart rhythms, its ambiance by turns claustrophobic and spacey, and its complex musical character, Bass Jihad lends itself to a state of wonderment: what in the world is going on? As you can tell, the answer is definitely not easy, but the challenge it presents to the imagination is thoroughly enjoyable.
www.jahworks.org/music/cd/...5html.html
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