Professing To Be The Sound Of An Iceberg Cruising The Jamaican Coastline The Whacked Out Digi-Dub Experiments Of Froid Dub Have Stood Out As Some Of The Best Of The Current Crop Of Productions That Sip From The Cup Of Dub. Here Spice Route Profiles The Two Veteran Producers Behind The Project As Well As Their Gloriously Idiosyncratic Label Delodio.
Read MoreFirst, a confession: I am writing this review eighteen months after it happened. Hot off the press, eh? I was going to lie and pretend it was written the next day and that you, dear reader, only stumbled on it now, thereby making you the Johnny-come-lately rather than me the… tragically unprofessional “reviewer”.
But then I thought I could spin this astounding contravention of usual journalistic practice into a uniquely dick-ish positive: namely, what is the truest review? The head-swirling one, all aflutter from the ambush of the moment? Or the one that stays with you for life - the one that gets repeated for years… the lasting, monolithic record?
Read MoreIn the last couple of years we’ve seen the 40th anniversaries of Joy Division’s two hugely-venerated albums ‘Unknown Pleasures’ and ‘Closer’. These are two of the most important records of my life, so I’ve probably read more about this band than any other, and that got me thinking: what single discovery always stands out for me? And can I add any observations to the existing mountain of study?
Perhaps the insight I find most fascinating - and pleasingly ironic - is that this band, so heavily-scrutinised for over four decades, apparently never dwelt for a moment on what they were creating.
Read MoreI’d heard the recent BEAK> single, ‘Brean Down‘, on 6 Music and liked it a lot – a noir and squalid atmosphere rendered invigorating by delicious choppy drums, with vocals that sounded like they were recorded in a bus shelter between gasps of butane. All I knew was BEAK> was Geoff Barrow of Portishead’s new outfit, although they’d actually been around ten years. So it was an easy decision to see them live, instead of staying in, as usual, to do the slo-mo hop-scotch around the creaky floorboards outside our toddler’s bedroom.
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