Yo, Windrush The Show

Whether you like this record or not, you have to agree that Dubwiser is a corking band name.  It's a good record, though it could be a bit dubbier.

DUBWISER – THE EMPIRE WINDRUSH (self-release) 

It’s only about 20 minutes since Dubwiser’s last EP, yet here they are again, slipping out a four-tracker to coincide with Black History Month. The tracks mostly use personal histories to highlight the ups and downs of racial integration (or lack of it) in twentieth-century Britain, proving that a human story will nearly always make a point better than a political harangue. The title track focuses on a single woman sailing to the UK on HMT Empire Windrush, but your ears will focus on the fantastic horns borrowed from Birmingham band KIOKO, especially the stretching-taffy trombone. The vocal melody is unexpectedly old-fashioned and romantic – the opening notes sound as though they’re going to go into ‘It Started With A Kiss’ - and ‘Amazing’ is similarly easy to hum along to, celebrating one of those unsung female heroes every family can point to. ‘Johnny’ is just as close to home, about the father of two of the band members, who hailed from Sierra Leone and flew in the RAF in World War II. It’s a funky reggae shimmy, and if the vocal sometimes grasps for the big notes, the emotion is palpable. ‘Take Down Colston’ advocates, as the name suggests, for the removal of the statue of the Bristol slaver...which is a great sentiment, though you do wonder whether Dubwiser know this already happened!  The lyrics might not be subtle, but the track may take the musical crown, with some gritty left-hand clav lines worthy of The Wailers’ great Earl “Wya” Lindo. If we get another Dubwiser EP next month, you won’t hear us complaining. 

Edwina Takes It All

OK, that took longer than I thought to type up, and I have to go and cook a risotto, so I'll leave you to it...

SALMONELLA DUB/ YT/ DUBWISER - Zodiac, 29/9/05

In general, devotional music works best when it pushes fewest boundaries - marvelling at technical novelties tends to distract from the matter in hand. I'm sure that any number of British Christians listen to Tallis' Spem In Alium or Bach's St Matthew's Passion for their beauty and ingenuity, but when they feel in the praying mood some harmless old John Rutter finds its way onto the stereo. Interestingly, in Jamaican musical history the rule is inverted. Much of the deepest, most invigorating reggae can be loosely classed as roots, with an emphasis firmly on the spiritual and irie, whilst dub - a blueprint for studio innovation over the last 35 years - is synonymous with Rastafarianism.

The only reason I mention this is to highlight the oddity of seeing a reggae gig mostly full of non-believers jumping and singing along to music that is explicitly religious. They're just there for the music, the lyrical content is irrelevant. I don't know whether Dubwiser are true believers, or whether they're just working within the confines of the genre, but they certainly deliver the goods with deep resonant tracks like "Jah Kingdom Come". Dispensing for the most part with reggae's signature offbeat guitar, they birng percussion to the fore, creating a bouncy mix of nyabinghi rhythms and dancehall clatter. The vocals are sweet and clear, too, in the best Alton Ellis tradition.

Only the overworked apocalyptic number obsessed with "prophecy" falls flat, coming on like a messy Rasta version of Aphrodite's Child. However, with this exception, you'll find that 30 minutes in the company of this relentlessly bouyant bass will put a smile on your face...as will the fact that said bass is seemingly played by Chris Moyles.

YT. I don't know whether that's his initials, a pun on "Whitey" or a play on Youth Training schemes. the last option would be fittest, as there's still lots more work to be done if YT is to become a successful live performer. May U-Roy strike me down if I'm forgetting the long relationship between toaster and selector in Jamaican music, but this feels like a man talking over a backing track, nothing more, nothing less.

In fairness, YT sounds like a decent rapper, if he could calm it down and stop growling like a B-movie pirate, but the real problem is the the backing tracks are so tinny and compressed they sound like they're playing on a tape recorder at the back of the room. The other difficulty is that there's no feeling of narrative at all, either lyrical or musical, and the tracks just start and then suddenly stop a few minutes later. I'm prepared to believe that in the studio YT could work some wonders, but live he's at best ignorable and at worst annoying.

I guess New Zeland dance music is an area in which my education's somewhat behind, as hundreds of cheering people have turned out to see Salmonella Dub, while I admit to never having heard of them. They know best, though, as SD are an excellent dance act. The sound hits the usual dubby club references, like Dreadzone and Zion Train, with some of the slower sections recalling long forgotten ambient skankers Another Fine Day. However, the live horns and full frontal drums add a more organic punch to the performance. It's all about texture and process, as guitars and brass drop into loping repetitions over which keyboards gradually phase and develop.

Salmonlella Dub are all clearly excellent musicians, and there's a part of me that would like to see them let go a little and throw in the odd solo. Perhaps "an excellent dance act" is a critidcism as well as a celebration: if you're not in the dancing mood sitting a nd wathcing the band could prove a tad samey and uninteresting. then again, the number of people in the Zodiac not in a dancing mood is approximately seven, so I think we'll strike that objection, don't you?