SATURDAY 16 | Fusing reggae and dub with Khmer saravan, Dub Addiction – voted Phnom Penh’s best band in The Advisor’s 2013 reader awards – are back after an epic tour of Europe. ‘Dirty’ and ‘raw’ are adjectives that sit well with their recently released second album, Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown, the hallmark of which is a more “organic, authentic dub sound” than the band’s eponymous first release. Says German music producer Professor Kinski, known to friends as Jan Mueller: “The whole album sounds more epic, more massive, more dub than the first one.” Their main ragamuffin toasters are MC Curly and DJ Khla, the latter someone Kinski compares to Cutty Ranks, Sizla and Anthony B. Sights and sounds familiar to Phnom Penh long-termers ooze through the mixer to create a distinctly Cambodian soundscape. A high point – if you’ll pardon the pun – is The Mighty Plan, on which “the voice of LSD guru Terence McKenna is lecturing about mankind’s first contact with aliens over an ultra-massive slow shuffle dub groove of Lee Perry – one of the best instrumentals on the album”. And it can only be right and proper to follow with a song entitled Ganja Dub, although it’s clearly far too fast for anyone genuinely out of their mind on marijuana. “We intend to conquer the universe,” a disembodied voice declares as Dub Addiction drive their mega-phat electro dub juggernaut into your sternum. You Have Been Warned!
WHO: Dub Addiction
WHAT: Reggae reinvented
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278
WHEN: 9pm November 16
WHY: Somewhere, in that great dancehall in the sky, King Tubby should be smoking a fat one and smiling