 |
| |
|
| |
Album Review
by Scott Sterling-Wilder
12-11-2003
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Jah Wobble goes on another sonic venture |
|
Jah Wobble: 'English Roots Music'
(30 Hertz Records)
Jah Wobble: folk music for dub-trekkers
Among the ample army of musicians this country has produced over the years, one of the most interesting/courageous/out-there and idiosyncratically stimulating is Jah Wobble. The man has been doing something special and particularly brilliant for a number of decades and, hopefully, will continue well into the future. For a simple reason, confession time here - this reviewer is a bit of dub-head. And, one of Jah Wobble’s many CDs is always stuck in my car-changer.
But, upon hearing about this album, I was a wee bit apprehensive because there are two types of music that can cause instant tummy discomfort in my piquant taste: folk and country. [Well, okay, corpo-crap as well but that, thankfully, is not a genre, just yet.] As I should have predicted, Wobble wouldn’t simply go for a mere rehash but regeneration… ‘English Roots Music’ is for the people who don’t particularly like to be reminded of musical styles that originated before the dawn of ‘Krautrock’ and are prog-rock denialists.
This is folk for anti-nostalgia archaeologists; ‘ERM’ resides in parallel zeitgeist because Wobble has teleported it into tomorrow, as usual. Well known songs [sez here], or rather - traditional, such as ’Blacksmith’, ’Byker Hill’ and ‘Banks Of The Sweet Primrose’ have gone through a Wobble-asation process of twists, turns, breaks, diversions and cultural-looping. The current English folk revival is a largely acoustic affair while Invaders are updating 1960-style folk-rock of Fairport Convention.
Liz Carter is a fine traditional singer enriching sonic washes that recall ‘sweet leaf’ states of mind, flavoured by Jean-Pierre Rasle’s pipes, it takes folk to the ’Futurama’ realm. Jah Wobble, a folk hero? Fate has rarely thrown stranger things at us… Imagine the Incredible String Band on a cyber-trip to Jamaica? Not even close!
I’ll never forget a conversation I had with John Lydon way back in the mid-1980 that he had seen Jah Wobble at the Covent Garden station, working on the tube. A man who had propelled Public Image Ltd, then collab’d with half-a-Can [Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit), ‘discovered’ WorldMusic… Whatever the reasons were that took him down the underground bowels, Mr John Wordle finally decided that he’s got a talent to take care of and re-service it for our benefit.
He subsequently recorded with Bjork, Ginger Baker, Massive Attack, Primal Scream, Brian Eno but it is Wobble’s home band that provide us with the major dope. The bass-meister and dub-aficionado strikes again by taking folk to its catharsis while, weirdly, managing to remain as advertised on the package.
8/10
Scott Sterling-Wilder
22-10-2001
Jah Wobble and The Invaders Of The Hearts’ album ‘English Roots Music’ is released 10 November 2003 by 30 Hertz Records
|
|
|
