THURSDAY 25 | Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown is an epic fusion of reggae and dub with Khmer saravan. Released by Hong Kong label Metal Postcards, it’s Dub Addiction’s most ambitious project yet. Dirty and raw are adjectives that sit well with the album, 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.” The 13 tracks feature a veritable Who’s Who of the local scene. Cambodian hip hop icons Pou Khlaing and Nen Tum make guest appearances on The Fruit Song and Nigerian vocalist Okoro Elias Jefferson debuts on Okoro, but the main ragamuffin toasters are MC Curly and DJ Khla, the latter someone Kinski compares to Cutty Ranks, Sizla and Anthony B. From the moment the CD clicks into the disc drive and begins to spin, 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 such a track 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 the final track drives its mega-phat electro dub juggernaut into your sternum. Wobble bass slams you against a sonic wall as distorted e-guitar solos slash at your face, fishing your brains right out through your nose. You Have Been Warned.
WHO: Dub Addiction
WHAT: Reggae reinvented
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278
WHEN: 9pm July 25
WHY: Somewhere, in that great dancehall in the sky, King Tubby should be smoking a fat one and smiling