| #520 |
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2000 |
Along comes another project from the prolific German digidub label Echobeach. Titled Select Cuts From Blood & Fire this is a grand remix project which has been brewing at Echo Beach for a long time. Taking on, and paying tribute to the highly successful re-mastering and re-release label project of Steve Barrow’s Blood & Fire, and inviting some key digidub musicians to perform remix duties, Select Cuts ends up as a very good release. Most impressively, The Orb return to their halcyon days of tracks like Towers Of Dub with their spacious and loping take on Keith Hudson’s I’m Alright; the almost scared Congos’ track Fisherman retains much of its qualities in its pounding treatment by Count Dubullah and Neil Sparkes; and Tappa Zukie’s Dub MPLA gets a growling dancefloor workout by Danny Briottet (ex-Renegade Soundwave). There’s also Smith & Mighty and Groove Corporation’s re-workings of Yabby You’s Conquering Lion , Stereo MC’s reworking I Roy’s War & Friction, and Mannessah and Sounds From The Ground taking on the Impact All Stars. Whilst none of the remixes take a particularly deconstructive approach as might have been expected if people like Pole or Burnt Friedmann were among the remixers, none of the remixes sound as if they were too constrained by reverence for the originals which is a good thing. If anything, many of the remixes demonstrate how widely spread samples of much of what has been reissued by the Blood & Fire catalogue have been in ‘unofficial’ work over the years. Taking digidub further from its roots, New Zealanders Pitch Black have just released their second album titled Electronomicon. Cut to just seven long tracks, Pitch Black managed to find an old analogue mixing desk for the mix down which adds an amazingly deep and resonant bottom end to all the tracks. Like their earlier work there is an element of sound here which echoes analogue acid as much as dub and the beats have a smoothed out digital feel. This comes together in epic tracks which slowly grow and emerge like ancient amphibians crawling out of a swamp of bass; tracks which should appeal as much to the trance heads as the rest of us. Expect another tour from them in the coming months. Veering into weird hip hop stuff, Melbourne’s ever excellent Synaesthesia Mail Order (www.synsound.com) is stocking the very odd releases from Dose One and related Anticon people. Of interest should be the near ambient Dose One and Boom Bip album Circle on Mush Records and the solo Dose One release Slow Death. Both take hip hop in directions far away from ‘funky beats’ and ‘reality rhymes’ instead concentrating on stream-of-consciousness playful rhymes and wordplays buried deep inside surreal sound sketches – often without beats. These two releases are well worth tracking down. At Frigid over the next fortnight we’ve got Stalker, a Canberran greenie producing some deep Chain Reaction-styled techno on the 24th and a swag of interstate and possibly international guests on the 1st who drop into Frigid on their way to the National Independent Electronic Labels Conference in Newcastle on Oct 5-7 (www.octapod.org.au/nielc). Also check out a special night at Sussex Lane (opposite the passenger wharves in Darling Harbour/Rocks) on Wednesday 27th with Seymour, Gemma, Sir Robbo, Sub Bass Snarl and several guests. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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