Sunday, October 22, 2017

Wolves of Heaven Vs Full of Hell



Earlier this year Full of Hell asked me to record guest vocals on a song on their new album (i sing the middle part of the song Ashen Mesh) and to submit a remix of the title track for the Japanese pressing of the album (released by Daymare)

I just put my version of Trumpeting Ecstasy up on SoundCloud, rather than giving them the noise drenched everything in the red mix i suspect they wanted i pulled most of the elements out and gave the song some more space than it originally had.

This track is not a dub track by any stretch of the imagination, but the techniques i used all came from  my interest in and reverence for dub music. I've long felt that anyone with an interest in experimental music who does not investigate what was happening in Jamaica in the 70s and 80s or doesn't spend some time really immersing themselves in production techniques of late 80s hip hop - particularly The Bomb Squad's work from roughly 1988-1991, is seriously missing out on some phenomenal music and approaches to composition and recording that were not being done by anyone else at the time.

I love rubbish tape hiss noise and stuffy old academics from Europe as the next guy blogging in a bootleg Throbbing Gristle shirt (as i am right now), but the work of people like King Tubby, Scientist, Adrian Sherwood, Hank Shocklee, Eric Sadler, Keith Shocklee, and Chuck D is as vital to my understanding of sound as anything by Pierre Henri, Pauline Oliveros, Lustmord, Einstürzende Neubauten, Macronympha, Faust, or Delia Derbyshire is.

Recommended reading:

Michael E Veal (2007) - Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae
Christopher Partridge (2010) - Dub in Babylon: The Emergence and Influence of Dub Reggae in Jamaica and Britain from King Tubby to Post Punk
Brian Coleman's three books on hip hop (Check the Technique volumes 1 & 2, and Rakim Told Me)

Recommended listening:

Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976)
Scientist - Best Dub Album in the World (1980)
African Headcharge - Environmental Studies (1982)
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back (1988)
Ice Cube - Amerikka's Most Wanted (1990)